I've been using Word since Word 95 (or Word 3 on the Mac). One of the things that really angered me was the inability to easily create custom toolbars when they came out with the Ribbon interface with Word 2007. I used to have custom toolbars all over my screen! The Legal Toolbars Add-In was a major piece of work for me.

When Word 2007 came out, custom toolbars (and menus) all went to the Add-Ins tab if they displayed at all.

In some ways, the QAT makes up for it, especially once I learned to store my QAT modifications in the templates rather than in the default. Ribbon XML modification is extremely powerful but nowhere as easy as the old toolbar creation/customization. One of the goals of the Ribbon interface was to make it harder to customize menus and toolbars because the customizations really frustrated the corporate IT departments.