Toribash was more fun around 3.0 - when there were about the right amount of servers, no qi restricted public servers, and a reasonable amount of clan servers.
The amount of people playing has grown, and so naturally the game has to adapt to accomodate them, but i'd say that forcibly splitting up the newer and more experienced players has had a negative effect. Most blackbelt level people who started to play after the protected "beginner" servers were brought in are woefully bad, since they play most of the time against other bad people.
User created servers haven't really changed the face of the game too much, since they just seem to have replaced all of the clan servers, which were recently being set the same kind of way, anyway (instagib face judo. etc. etc.). A few mods are one thing, but when most of the servers past the public ones are set to some sort of mod, then it gets a bit stupid.
Why nabi hasn't gone for the former setup, but on a bigger scale (say, two public betabox servers instead of one?), and removed all of the stupid "protections" for low belts, only they know. I still remember enjoying 10th dans coming into the "beginner classic" servers and showing off some skill sometimes.
-apologies for the typo's/inarticulate crap, but it's late. I'm sure the above is vaguely legible-