Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Technical/@comment-7981828-20130512212330/@comment-188432-20130714130934

I think the OP is misunderstanding the new forum software.

The ability to highlight is better than the ability to sticky. Highlighting means people are more likely to read it than if it were stickied. I mean, sure, they can chose to mark all messages as read, and therefore bypass the important message, but they could also simply choose not to read a sticky on the old forum. At least with highlighting, they'll see an alert come up and have to do something with it. Most likely they'll just click on the message alert and reveal a list of all the messages. With a sticky, you have to With a highlight, you're served the title of important thread without ever leaving the page you're currently on.
 * go to Forum:Index
 * go to the home page of the particular forum
 * take notice of the sticky at the top of the page

Granted, stickies do nothing for IP users, but for registered users they're far more likely to attract attention than stickies.