Close to doing the same thing too. Returned to the game after long time and was beginning to enjoy farming at certain low level areas that are not insanely crowded (obviously not talking about Pavel...). The documented change of mats not being sellable (and now not droppable in these areas any more) destroyed my adena making chances. I only have two accounts, I have a life, I do not want to create more just to be able to sustain my main character.
Also, the change in blazing swamp is ridiculous! The area, at least the first day I checked, is completely not playable as it is an FFA arena and unless you are a heavy DD you have no chance of doing anything. At least in the previous version of the area if you were lucky you could get an area for yourself and stay for some time. Hell, I even managed to make the 1000 items in just one afternoon with my alt. Needed luck but was doable, what I saw yesterday was crazy... On the other hand, the change in bloody swamp is better as the area is not for farming but for leveling. In one overnight xp I got 0 drops, nothing except adena, but my iss got from 96 to 97,5 in 7 hours with 0 vit. That is good.
Thank you very much for the exalted rewards, good thing that for once you considered the players that have already finished the q. Also, EV now does not have aggro mobs which is again good for us, undergeared strugglers.
In short, I believe that in this patch, you made some effort to fix and improve some things, but it seems that you also made some effort to destroy some things, in both efforts, you succeeded. And imagine I did not have enchanted skills or weapons or whatever all the other heavy investors are complaining about. Let's see if some of the destroyed gets back to normal at some point.