The taming change, then change back, is first and foremost. If you folks had kept up with UHall, you'd have seen there were never a lot of complaints about looting rights for healers. There was no reason to "fix" something that few, if any, were calling broken. But you threw the change on Test Center, then a couple of shards, with not a lot of testing time.
I spend a fair amount of time reading UHall (probably too much), as does the rest of the team. We get a lot of reports from a variety of sources - in game, emails, the forums...we recieved a great volume of reports regarding healing looting rights, hence the changes.
Then there's Publish 81. Elections have proven a huge disappointment because smaller shards have more difficulty with the unexpected weekly tribute. OK, big changes to armor, maybe not what we expected, but it's not what will keep players interested. As much as I like refinements for certain advantages, as much as others like the LMC bonuses of non-med armor, most of us could have done without these changes. We'd rather have seen something fun to play.
I'm going to have to disagree with your characterization of elections being a huge disappointment. The response to the elections on many shards has been hugely positive. Our Event Moderators continue to knock it out of the park. People are role playing their positions in hugely creative ways. People who have never role played before, are getting involved. In the future we'll be making changes to the way the tributes are handled to more positively influence the purchase the trade deals. The city stones were just a first step and we have no plans to abandon them anytime soon.
As far as the armor revamp, it again, was something that was hugely asked for from a variety of sources. Something as fundamental as armor was bound to be a delicate topic to tackle and in the end we think it addressed some of the concerns people had regarding armor and weapons, but admittedly it wasn't perfect. Again, we continue to monitor feedback and will be addressing some of the concerns regarding refinements in the future.
I'd have liked a Deceit or Hythloth revamp, but those are improbable with your reduced manpower. How about just a redo of Covetous rewards? How many people kept going after the first month? It's too much grind to get points for things that expire in one day. Cut the points in half. You wouldn't need to change anything else.
Treasures of Tokuno: how hard would this be to turn back on? Keep the last range of minor colors, and let 10 be turned in to get one of the Cleanup Britannia and Compassion Dye colors.
Someone had suggested a Malas event of two sides fighting, much like the Bane-Ophidian war. How hard would it be to turn it back on, presumably restoring the code? Relic fragments aren't as precious now, so to replace them as rewards, how about a piece of crystalline blackrock? Personally I'd have them spawning as loot on the corpses, but you apparently thought that made them too common.
In the last Producer's Letter, it was mentioned fey slayers will be added to dungeon loot: surely this isn't hard to add to the code that determines which slayer. For a little more work, what should be just an extra line or two of code, let the property generate only in Shame and Covetous. This would encourage people to visit their areas of lesser spawn, looking for clean fey slayers to imbue.
Someone recently expressed to me that UO might be nearing the end, and I hope that's not true. You've been looking for new EMs, which is great. The regular meetings with city governors can get a lot more player involvement. But what can you do to keep the game fresh and interesting? "Maintenance mode," meaning no further changes, might as well mean pulling the plug.
We (the entire team) are incredibly dedicated to Ultima Online. We live and breathe UO. We aren't in maintenance mode, the furthest thing from it. We've got some really exciting stuff in the works right now that falls in line with exactly what you (and others) are asking for - new content....some of it modeled after past events like Treasures of Tokuno with a fresh twist, along with visiting some classic Ultima that has never been seen in our version of Britannia before. Are we nearing the end? Heck no...we are just getting this party started. We've got some exciting new stuff in the planning and early development stages right now (Hop on over to Mesanna's Virtue vs. Vice thread) and continue to look forward to reading your feedback.
Hope everyone who is celebrating this weekend has a safe and enjoyable holiday
