"In November 1998 an survey was held to allow Vim users to vote for changes to Vim. This resulted in a good overview of what users wanted to be added. This is the top six:"

  1. Add folding (display only a selected part of the text)
  2. Vertically split windows (side-by-side)
  3. Add configurable auto-indenting for many languages (like 'cindent')
  4. Fix all problems, big and small; make Vim more robust
  5. Add Perl compatible search pattern
  6. Search patterns that cross line boundaries

Compare that to the top 6 most requested features today:

  1. add IDE features (debugger integration, shell window)
  2. add integration with Python instead of inventing more Vim script
  3. improve diff mode: automatic refresh, better merge support
  4. fix all problems, big and small; make Vim more robust
  5. improve syntax highlighting speed
  6. add an indication what text was changed since editing started (change bar or diff)

From:

http://www.vim.org/sponsor/vote_results.php