I don't know about you guys, but there are a few things about the update that I do not like.
The most noticeable thing is the friend interface. As a whole, I prefer the old one, but like one or two of the new features. I thought we would be able to see how long one of our friends has not been on. However, that player has to be online in order to see that and this makes that feature useless. I do like the friend count and being able to organize according to your preferences.
I do not like that the instant level 50 elixir is so expensive. I could get on board with that price if that was instant max level elixir. Levels 1 - 50 don't take much time at all and are not as grueling as 60 - 110 (Polaris is the exception to that because of how much experience is given). $50 to be level 50 is quite high, but that makes it around $1 a level if you started at level 1. If you have already leveled that character to 5, then that is about $0.90 a level. If your character is level 10 after you purchase the elixir, then that is about $0.80 a level. Compare that with buying areas with crowns, then you might save some money. However, a membership and leveling yourself is the best way to go and I believe that is their intention.
I wish some new mounts were added. I wish that there were more variations of tigers and lions. Those look the best in my opinion. They should also bring back the charity mount back.
These are just a few of my opinions and I know not everyone will agree with me, but I really want to see how everyone else feels about the update.
Amen about the Friends interface!!! Please, please, please let us go back to the old one! The new one is not intuitive and covers up your whole screen when you have a friend open! Our family has about six accounts and we all hate it.
The only thing I don't like about the new friends interface is that if I leave it open, it starts bringing up friends if I hit the "down" arrow on my keyboard. I wish that would go away.
I think there may be a thing or two here that may need to be cleaned up with it, but overall I don't want to see them go back to the old interface. The "Remove Friend" button was way to close to the "Teleport to Friend" button. I hated having to start all the way at the beginning of the list after I removed a friend on the 5th page.
There are just too many things about the old interface that I don't want back, which is why I'm willing to live with a few of the minor issues I have with the new interface. Tweak the new system, but don't ever go back to the old.
As for the Level 50 elixir, I'm fine with it being expensive. The worlds you play from levels 1 to 50 are the ones I enjoyed the most. I don't know why anybody who has played them would want to skip them. But some people do. If they want to pay that kind of money to miss out on the funnest content of the game, then who am I to object?
A bit of a tutorial might be in order and there are things that I though would be included or easier to use that were not and things that I've not quite been able to understand like the million icons? Is this so you can group friends or just attach an emote/image to a friend? Either way it always pops up when I don't want it to and I still have a hard time determining what friends are active and which are not. I'd think that it would be a filter, but I guess these weird images are filters? I don't know...
I'm fine with moving forward, but it shouldn't be at the expense of the things we liked and depended upon. At least give us a way to make the new interface look/behave somewhat similar to the previous one. I don't need cute little boxes around each friend's name. The colors and lack of contrast are much harder to read. I can't seem to sort my True Friends to the top any more - so I'm searching through pages looking for them. I have to hover over each icon to try to remember what it does. The list of dissatisfaction grows each day...
I'm a huge fan of the game and have been a paying member on multiple family accounts for 6-ish years. I don't make these complaints lightly. I can't imagine how this passed any kind of usability testing from real users.
As to the "pay your way to level 50 elixir" I'm okay with it and the price. If the market will pay that price, good for them. I too still find levels 1-50 to be some of the best parts of the game. I wouldn't skip them personally.
Gabrielle GoldenHeart 
110 
