Subtle changes, bugs and feedback

Yes, Jon's obviously right in that--I just thought it was more logical for the thread title to link to the first post, although it is undoubtedly more practical in the majority of cases for it to link to 'newpostinthread' (which I think is up to a week old if you haven't looked at a thread for a while or have never looked at it, but there may be more nuances).

Another option would be to make 'newpostinthread' always link to the first post the viewer hasn't seen, i.e. if they've never looked at a thread, it would link to the first post. That would emphasise the first post (whose quality would obviously vary). People could click through towards the end of the thread fairly quickly. Or, if they hadn't looked at a thread for two weeks, it would pick it up two weeks before. However, I'm sure the 'one week before' rule was introduced for a reason, and I guess this may be one of those aspects of vBulletin that would take more major re-writing, even if you thought it made sense.

That is exactly what it already does.

And if by chance the link isn't going to the first post in the thread, then the "Started by" underneath appears and is hyperlinked to that first post.

It does what you wish it would, and always has.