Regarding that post, the information given out was intentionally broad. Players have inserted their own concepts of when and how this issue will be solved. Beyond that, nothing that was said can be considered akin to 'insider trading', nor can any comments by players since the patch be considered authoritative answers on the subject. The
only authoritative answer on the subject of blessed items comes from Derrick at this point, and it is spelled out as follows:
Derrick wrote:This effectively corrects a broken mechanic without violation of many previous statements both public and private by the administration that blessed items cannot be destroyed. I don't expect that this will end the debate on the destroy-ability of these grandfathered items, but this change is offered for now as at least a first step in correcting this previously inaccurate mechanic.
The bolded section is the part of interest. Clearly, the patch was not intended as a permanent change, otherwise the bolded portion would not have existed in the first place. Extending on that, the only possible change to blessed items that will have any
meaningful effect is to eventually make all of them breakable. Thus, the statement that I
reiterated has been out in the open for quite some time. Beyond that, I did not give a time frame for when such a change would occur because there is no time frame for it (ideally sooner than later, but no guarantees can be made).
Beyond the issue with blessed clothing, the change to friending mounts is a change that has been on the table for quite some time and has been readily available to anyone willing to do the research. The patch notes from May 25, 1999 clearly state the following:
Transfer and friending actually do two loyalty checks--one for the old owner and one for the new. Both must succeed for the order to be obeyed.
Extending upon this, the success or failure of a command is expressly due to a loyalty check which accounts for the orneriness of a pet, its difficulty to tame, and its raw loyalty and compares it against the owners animal taming and animal lore. This is documented in this line item from the May 25, 1999 patch note:
Pet "orneriness" is now a much larger factor. The tougher an animal was to originally tame, the tougher it will be to control in general. The higher your taming skill and animal lore skills, the better able to control the animal you will be. Animal taming is more significant for this than animal lore is.
Since the success of a command is dependent on loyalty checks, and loyalty checks take into consideration the difficulty of an animal to tame, orneriness, animal taming, and animal lore, nightmares and other 'high end' creatures will be virtually impossible to friend or transfer to a player without taming because
the recipient of the friend command will fail the taming check. As a broad result, friending animals to a player without taming will not be possible anymore.
Finally, if players ask me questions, I am willing to answer them. However, nothing I say directly to a player on Ventrilo, in-game, or IRC is something that isn't out in the open, and I will not hold my tongue under the pretense of 'insider information' for those who aren't willing to do the research.