I genuinely feel half of what was originally mentioned will make its way into the game. People are just being impatient. Battle/duel will arrive as will private servers. (Any, if not all, that I mention could have already been said - just giving my 2 cents as a veteran MnB Warband player.)
I do agree that the lack of the "coat of arms" feature in Warband is an upsetting feature to lose though. It would be fantastic to have that back eventually, I generally do not see how it would be impossible or difficult to implement. As mentioned by the OP, it gave an aspect of "oh that guy" during games and allowed you to know who you were fighting. In another aspect, it allowed you to possibly take pride in a banner of your choosing that would grow over time.
(Throwing this in, give us an options in the settings to change the settings when a friendly player dies it is denoted as red and when a friendly kills an enemy it is denoted as green rather than the faction colors. This may seem minor, but I believe it is something that could go a long way for a lot of veterans that are accustomed to the old style of kill feed.)
As for the load-out option, I'm still trying to make my mind up about it. I'm currently sitting in the frame of mind of "why can't we have both?" type of deal. Make the player base that enjoys the new way happy and vice versa. I want to be able to run around naked swinging a 2her as a sweaty try hard.