I do, at least half-way, agree that some parts of the UI, especially parts of the HUD, may very well benefit from abstracting the protocol a bit. I'm a bit split in the issue, though, and in fact I've been quite split on it for a very long time now. On the one hand, it's very convenient to keep as much as possible on the server, because it means I can just update game mechanics and UI in one go, without having to touch the client [which has the added benefit of not having to do any Java programming ;)]. In particular the meters of which you speak have seen quite some changes (though that was probably before you SA people got here, I think), which were made very convenient by being able to do all the work on the server alone.
On the other hand, it would make quite some sense, especially now that I've publicized the code, to make the UI more alterable by users -- that is, without having to touch the client.
As for the particular problem of having to send multiple packets for simple things, though, I had rather planned on fixing that by sending several "sequenced messages" in one single IP packet; that would have many benefits anyway, but it requires changes to some data structures on the server (if it weren't for that, I'd have done it long ago).
As for WoW, I've read through parts of its protocol at some time (on a reverse-engineering site, that is), and I think the problem with that, which I want to avoid, is that the protocol is burdened with a message type for every little thing. It's just ugly. As for Haven, there are better ways of making the UI skinnable, and I think I can promise you that I'll be thinking about them, at the very least.
However,
skrylar wrote:Understandable opinion, though I meant mostly on the project than the medium
It strikes me, now that you mention it, that you'll be having trouble making a feature-complete client on the CLR, at least without running Java bytecode. Some resources contain some integrated Java code that is loaded on demand -- in particular, such things as some special sprites and some of the rarer UI elements.