Hi slender, thanks for making a post after we spoke last night briefly about it.
Regarding custom tags, the custom surf tag was never a guaranteed donor perk, it was given out on a first-come, first-serve basis, and was actually
removed as an advertised donor perk back in August. When I say it wasn't a guaranteed donor perk, it's because it was only available to first 15 donors. This turned into an even lesser number when I found out certain name tag slots were broken by the surf timer. Hard coded are VIP, Teacher, and Admin tags, so that brings us down from 15 to 12, and the last 2 tag slots were bugged, so we only had 10 available at any given time.
Regarding the new chat processing system, this was brought up 8 days ago, discussed in the servers, and any community member could freely participate, vote, and voice their concerns. See:
http://snksrv.com/threads/surf-server-chat-processing.83/
http://snksrv.com/threads/server-update-11-18-16.90/
As you can see this new, more standard system allows for an unlimited number of tags, and separates the ranking system from fun custom tags. It also allows for more consistent tags/colors throughout all servers, and creates more actual donor perks. I'm always on the hunt for more donor perks. The surf timer chat processing also opened up some serious security holes, which this fixes. At the time I had some sort of hacky fixes, but nothing I was comfortable with for long-term.
I've had only one other person complain about this change and it's for almost the opposite reason - ranks don't show up in chat. Last night (on stream) when I was in the server, I had more people praise the new system in 5 minutes, than people have complained since the change was made days ago. The surf timer we use limits us greatly with what we could do, if we had someone who could do some coding to improve the timer we have, this situation could be avoided. Unfortunately, that's just not the case at the moment. The servers don't generate enough revenue to hire a coder to make these kinds of modifications.
Candidly: Ranks aren't meant to be a dick swinging contest, and now they're all displayed in one place, on the scoreboard. I've left the VIP tag available on the scoreboard for donors to use that if they really wish. If you're worried about your tag not showing up in voice chat, that's such a tiny overview of the situation, maybe you're using voice chat too much ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Long story short, this change will not get reverted unless there are some serious concerns, but so far the overall community reaction to this has been quite positive. If you're unhappy with the change and donated only for that reason that you specified, I'm sorry you misunderstood. Feel free to shoot me a message and I'd be happy to work out a refund for all of your donor perks.