There are a number of changes that have been made in ver. 8 that I don’t see as improvements to ver. 7.
For instance, if I want to remove all textures from a model, in ver 7 all I have to do is select the hierarchy, select the material/swap texture files plugin, check the ‘remove all texture references’ box and click OK. All textures are removed without futher ado. Do the same thing in ver. 8 and if you have 100 objects, you are presented with 100 boxes in which you must click OK in order to remove the textures. (Maybe there’s an easier way to do this, and I’m not aware of it.)
Anytime more steps are required to perform a certain task in a newer version than were required in an earlier version, I don’t see this as an improvment. (Another example is exporting to a different format. Instead of just selecting the parent, now you must select the hierarchy.)