Let me preface this by saying I did buy a slayer helm, so I'm certainly not doing a great job as far as reinforcement goes, but still figured it was worth a comment. From my perspective, I have to agree and say this does seem like some kind of money grab.. let me explain why.
Me, along with numerous others actually asked you about doing a custom dono for the Zuk helm maybe a month back, to which I was told that it wouldn't be a donator item, instead, it'd likely be some sort of inferno cape sink. Honestly, I think it should've been kept that way, and I'm unsure what changed. What does it mean that those who buy it now are those who are just early supporting? We simply just paid to get an item that has a reputation of being locked behind the hardest challenges in the game; something we were told wouldn't be the case with this specific item. Does this mean it's going to be removed from the store? If so, what's the point? The reputation of the item has already been stripped. If it remains in the store, what's the point of putting in an alternative way to get it in game? This really just seems like an "ornament kit" similar to the ely ornament kit to me, which is overall pretty disappointing. I really think the execution here could've been better, but I'm unsure if that's even changeable at this point.
Also a bit confused by the RE-introduction of discontinued items. I had to fight to even get a pair of santa boots that got split from a set in a scenario I won't go into detail on in here because those "those items aren't supposed to be brought back into the game"... and then you put it in a cosmetic box? I'm just shocked to see some of the highest valued cosmetics (specifically antisanta suits) getting literally shot in the knees and then kicked over, after having a previous stance of keeping those cosmetics from re-entering the game. This isn't the first time a cosmetic that held a high price was just mutilated by being shoved into a squeal of fortune-esque box that costs $10. I'd feel pretty shitty right now if I held on to one of those antisanta suits, or even a santa suit as a way of showing how long you've been active and supporting the server.
Sure, the ankou set is cool, but this is really starting to feel like a departure from what has kept most of us on Alora, a feel of at least some authenticity. I'll give you props on implementing the monkey suggestion, not really what I had envisioned, but that's maybe just a personal taste thing. I'm happy to see community suggestions being implemented regardless.
Appreciate some of the QoL stuff. Attention to gauntlet is nice. Feel like you kinda upset some people with the raid time reset thing though, but maybe I'm not in the meta enough to know if some recent changes make it worth resetting and starting from scratch. Personally, I'd have like to keep my records just to set a goal for myself. Can we get at least a bit more detailed record keeping? Maybe the fastest time displayed is for that scale raid or something, so if you finish a solo raid, it tells you that raid time and your solo raid PB.
I don't know what else to really say. I worry that this is the start of momentum in a direction a large part of the community is against. I hope you can see that. If I wanted to play a server with full blown pay to win and full blown custom items, I would do that. I like the authentic flavor here. I hope it doesn't change.