I agree with pretty much everybody else here. The new town skins suck, and the lack of the old ones is a great loss.

Plarium will soon crush itself under its own weight, relying on a handful of egotistic wallet warriors spending large sums of money to be the biggest, rather than hordes of casual players spending smaller amounts of money for occasional growth, is a bad business plan. There is a balance to be had here, egos who want to be the biggest will start dropping off once the ones they get to be bigger than start to realize, they could play for 5 lifetimes and never get anywhere in this game. It's too big. 

Better to let some of the big players drop off out of boredom due to a lack of new toys, thus giving hope to some of the smaller players that one day they'll ascend to the top ranks, than to try to keep the egotistic wallet warriors already in the top ranks happy all the time with everlasting growth. A pyramid is only a pyramid if there are lower levels holding the top ones up. Otherwise the top ones fall down. 

Plarium, stop putting the squeeze on. Listening to the kings of Jotunheim for your ideas for upgrades may very well be a bad idea. People will soon begin to join and quit immediately due to being overwhelmed at how much work needs to be done to become a contender in this game, if this hasn't already started happening. How many thousands of dollars does it already take to get anywhere significant in this game? Too many, that's how many. 

I will soon quit too. I'm sick of finally getting somewhere, only to have Plarium raise the stakes yet again. 

Things that didn't exist when I first started this game: Level 3 strongholds, level 4 strongholds, shamans, runes, ghosts, shamans gear, Valkyries citidale, Aes's, 2nd tier specialty equipment(this one pissed me off, I had just completed my 1st tier gear when it was released, making all the work I'd just done obsolete), fortress fighting gear, Jotunheim and all associated monsters and events, level 61 - 70 heros, T6 troops, T7 troops, T1-T5 section in oracle, level 15 - 30 VIP, drakkars, level 32 - 35 towns, KvK fury battles or towers, and a whole slew of special resources like totems, gold nuggets, obsidian, star shards, soul shards, hero keys, etc..., and of course as per this conversation, upgradeable town skins. 

I miss the good old days of seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, when the highest levels of this game were actually obtainable.