It supposedly going "bad" around 2010/2011 is a retarded meme spouted by retarded faggots. I'd say it actually went unforgivably bad in 2016.
>valves matchmaking replaced with a shitty queue system
>valve nerfing all the fun weapons because they decided to listen to the competitive community for whatever fucking reason
>community starts to shift, all those fun community servers start becoming ghost towns in favor of 24/7 2fort
>trannies start latching onto the game for dear life and slowly replace bronies (who actually were the backbone of community content despite being faggots)