Pretty sure the devs got rid of it so we would have to set up our own trade networks in order to encourage exploration and I guess utilization of more of the world map
Karede wrote: It takes a special kind of autism to play this game
This was because the RoB was a wasteland of lazy people who started the game months ago, played for three days, and left a claim the size of the Louisiana purchase, and thousands of noobs looking for lone apple trees to chop down and then starve to death next to.
Getting rid of the RoB has been an improvement, despite the loss of trade.
The Ring of Brodgar was a highly artificial focus point in what is otherwise a world left entirely to what the players do with it, I'm not at all sorry to see it gone. Sure, it's a bit inconvenient not to have a central point for trade, but overcoming that is part of the challenge of the game.
Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left. Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective.
-Commissioner Pravin Lal, "A Social History of Planet"