Ok here goes...
Troublemaker, racist, or hacker admins will ALWAYS end up with empty servers. They are easily avoidable and in no way any sort of a problem. I can count on one hand the number of bad admins I've encounted over the past 10 years.
You may not have had a ping worse than 70 (must be nice to live near the global datacenter) many games are at LEAST half full of 200-300+ pingers. Which DOES cause a ton of lag, even for the low ping players. That's why servers that are properly configured always kick for high pings.
As far as variety in playlists/servers, in CoD4, WaW, and even BO1 I ALWAYS had a variety of servers to choose from. Many servers of each gametype, and even quite a few mixed gametype servers. To say that "95% of all servers will be TDM" is a joke. I never play TDM gametypes and there are always a TON of servers to choose from. - Even today I can hop onto CoD4 and find quite a few servers that are not TDM, which is pretty good for how old the game is.
You say under a matchmaking setup at least you can play your gametype? Well sure, that's IF the "server" isn't lagging, IF it doesn't force you into a lopsided 6v2 type game, IF the game isn't full of troublemakers, racists, or hackers, IF the game isn't unbalanced due to a party.... IF that gametype even has a playlist!! Your chances of playing a civilized, lag free, hacker free game of a favorite gametype is MUCH higher on proper dedi's...
Backing out of a lopsided game of party vs randoms is not "cowardly" - There is no point in playing such a lopsided game, especially for good players who are left feeling like it's 6v1. You can slaughter the enemy team all game and still lose because you have a team of random noobs. - There is a reason teamstacking has always been frowned upon, and partying up is teamstacking, period.
Speaking of parties, it has ALWAYS been possible (and rather easy) to have party vs party games on proper server setups. As I said before they are called CLAN MATCHES or SCRIMS. Simple to arrange, easy to find an empty server for everyone to join (no problem getting all your friends in the server) and you actually get to play a REAL game instead of just pubstomping randoms. (which btw takes zero skill and leaves the parties thinking they're "pro")
Sorry but your points are NOT valid under proper server setups. Even the few problems Black Ops introduced (like an overabundance of "rules" servers) can be EASILY fixed with added browser features.
- Custom rules? Unranked servers that allow leveling up/prestiging with no global leaderboards or stat tracking. have leveling up/prestiging follow from ranked to unranked (who gives a flying rats *** if some kids boost in an unranked server for an emblem or icon anyway - it wouldn't show on leaderboards or their stats) - Admins would have no more incentive to make their servers "ranked" like they did in BO1.
- Guidelines for "ranked" servers. Vanilla rules (all perks/weapons/playstyles) All maps (admin's choice of rotation, random, or player vote) max playercount of 18 or 24 (unranked can have 64) Report server button with dev team to police the servers. It would be a million times easier for devs to police servers instead of players anyway (as they currently try to do with BO2 and fail) - Servers that break the rules are automatically moved to unranked on first offense, locked out on 2nd offense, admin ban on 3rd offense. -
That right there pretty much eliminates bad admins, rules, and 24/7 servers. It makes "vanilla" games stupidly easy to filter for and find, and doesn't ruin the create a class concept. They could even tweak the"quick match" option so it can place your beloved parties into "ranked" servers with enough slots.
That's just me taking 2 min to think of a solution, so obviously these so called "problems" you mention can all be eliminated easily.
The countless flaws of matchmaking simply CANNOT be fixed. Primarily since they mostly stem from the inability to CHOOSE what server you join. The very nature of matchmaking is to remove that choice.