Cagey

It's not a bug, but actual "feature". The only hope we have, is, if the developers of the forums software change their mind about it. The "hope" is all we have at this point, we can't influence their decisions. But you can use streams for what you miss. My Activity Stream -> My Friends Statuses.

A staff member replied to my update.  Looks like they’re trying their best to find a work around.  

*crossing fingers*

Given the notification everyone is looking for still works, but appears to be merged into another setting, I fear it is not a "bug", and I wouldn't call it a "feature" either. It's just a small "change" at most. Maybe in their eyes that was just a minor change that was supposed to make the notification settings more plain and easier to navigate. Chances are they weren't aware it is so important for everyone here and simply didn't expect the massive impact such seemingly tiny change can cause.

In the changelog I cannot seem to find the mention of that exact change, but I did find something about fixing an issue with status updates taking long to post when having many followers and that made me wonder if this might be related. Perhaps they did that to fix a performance issue?

Well, let's hope they'll remaster the notification settings altogether, because there should be way more options than just the one everyone is mentioning right now.