[...] That was only one small point. TF2Lobby is active too, that doesn't mean it's any good. Trust me, in the long run it's going to turn into exactly what I said in the article. Just look at the EU Newbie Mixes if you want to see how that plays out.

Pixelpickup was really active then the bot died and it seemed to die along with it.

The big thing the HL pickup has is a Steam group with several volunteer admins to promote it. The North American one (#tf2.pug.nahl) uses the same means of advertising, it is easily the most active PUG channel in TF2, well it was until someone made an intermediate PUG channel (#tf2.mix.hl) - they easily get up to 10-15 games a day...for Highlander without even needing to promote itself. Both channels are still extremely active..

Then there is the frustrating aspect of Coverage in this scene, for such a huge community we have very few people willing to do any sort of coverage, not just for 9v9. Nothing is easier than typing a couple of paragraphs about the season, about teams, about players - we all gossip this stuff in our mumbles or on the forums or on steam friends.

The issue of casting is another one, whilst I don't like to criticise VanillaTV they did 2 HL games all season and one was because I wanted to cover SNSD v Colony - now VTV do amazing work when they start covering the game but to actually cast a game they need casters and we have SO FEW and I don't understand why I am the only one willing to cover HL for VTV when hundreds of people play the gamemode, in North America we got dozens of people casting all skill levels from top to bottom.

This rant is better off being put on VanillaTF2, it has little to do with the state of Pixelpickups, if you had several volunteers both participating and promoting the channel constantly you'd soon get it active again.

http://skyride.org/2013/01/the-problem-with-pickups/

I don't really mind it being removed to be honest. The whole pickup situation has been bothering me for months, and a lot people really don't understand the problem. I'm quite tempted to do a big blog post about it.

I don't really mind it being removed to be honest. The whole pickup situation has been bothering me for months, and a lot people really don't understand the problem. I'm quite tempted to do a big blog post about it.

Perhaps make a steam group where there is a bot that automatically invites people who've played in the pick- up into the group and makes an announcement when a pickup has like 8/12 players added or something. Perhaps a bit hard to implement, but maybe it would get the pug more active, as users who are not on IRC 24/7 can get notified.

ITT: people complaining pickup is dead, want it to be more dead.