Sorcerer, could you please provide a link to your contributions to the database? If you are not a developer, that is ok as well... could you then please provide a link to your bug reports? Such things could help us drastically in fixing our "bugged" database. Uneccessary flaming such as this: "DB is as bugged as Release 4 was," does NOT help.
Sorry Titanium, we do only provide update packs for hot fixes. This is for a few reasons. The biggest reason being that people then just apply the updates to some other project's db or custom db, thus never providing us feedback or helping this project in any way, shape, or form. Obviously, this has adverse effects on our community, and project as a whole. Not to mention, it is simply not fair to all the developers who use their own personal time to contribute to the project, just so they can see some dumb ass posting it on ACweb and taking full credit for it.
If you are doing custom work to your database, that is completely up to you. However, I would recommend backing up your custom work through sql statements. This way, when you need to update your world db, you simply run the world installer, then apply your custom updates and bam, your good to go again.
Raydeon