As I don't doubt many of you noticed, there were three statuses removed from Windows Live Messenger 9.0, namely "Be Right Back", "On The Phone" and "Out to Lunch". The only remaining statuses are "Available", "Away", "Busy" and "Appear offline". You can no longer set yourself to one of the old statuses, and anybody having one such deprecated status, will be shown as "Away". This is, in my opinion, a program lying to you and it could cause misinterpretations and such things - and either way, I like these three, and I'm not the only one.
I created a petition[1] and a friend of mine posted on a forum read by MS developers, but I seriously doubt that will have any effect. I saw some people come by and sign the petition, and that's only a fraction of the people who want these statuses back.
Is it possible for Plus! to re-add those statuses? It would be best if support for these statuses could be readded so that my status according to the server *is* actually "Be right back", for example, and other (read third-party) clients would show as be right back too. Though, I've looked into the protocol a while ago for writing a client, and I seriously doubt it's possible for plugins to send protocol messages the client itself does not even understand anymore.
So if that's not possible, there's the alternative: is it possible for Messenger Plus! to do some kind of status emulation? E.g. when I set my status to brb, I show to clients without Plus (possibly including third-party clients) as "Away", and to clients with Plus support as "Be right back".
I hope this is possible... Thanks anyway, and don't forget to sign the petition if you agree!
[1]
http://www.petitiononline.com/wlm9stat/petition.html