I think those 2 unknowns are just normal group packets. They look pretty familiar just based on the info in them.
That 12/5/11 packet is interesting. Here is the breakdown of the packet into a struct as far as I can tell. Almost all of the fields match up with what I have seen on VoA other than the last extra field on VoA and the Status field for the new F2P membership stuff. Though, there appears to be an extra MercType field at the top of the struct, which is something I haven't seen before. Maybe if we try the struct like that, the update will work properly. I will see if I can figure out a good way to do that. I can't think of a good reason to have the MercType field redundant like that unless it is something to tell the client which is the highest type it currently has access to or something.
Code:
01 00 00 00 - 1 - MercStatus
e4 a4 bf 07 - 130000100 - MercType again ?
01 00 00 00 - 1 - MercCount
16 07 00 00 - 1814 - MercID
e4 a4 bf 07 - 130000100 - MercType
29 41 c0 07 - 130040105 - MercSubType
00 00 00 00 - 0 - PurchaseCost
00 00 00 00 - 0 - UpkeepCost
00 00 00 00 - 0 - AltCurrencyCost
00 00 00 00 - 0 - AltCurrencyUpkeep
13 00 00 00 - 19 - AltCurrencyType
00 - 0 - MercUnk01
a0 bb 0d 00 - 900000 - TimeLeft
24 00 00 00 - 36 - MerchantSlot
01 00 00 00 - 1 - MercUnk02
02 00 00 00 - 2 - StanceCount
00 00 00 00 - 0 - MercUnk03
01 - 1 - MercUnk04
01 00 00 00 - 1 - StanceIndex
02 00 00 00 - 2 - Stance
00 00 00 00 - 0 - StanceIndex
01 00 00 00 - 1 - Stance