CLOK BBS

Currently I am wearing the following armor:

head: .... (leather) an ice-coated lovely viridian soft leather helm (battered)
neck: .... (leather) an ice-coated thick leather gorget (undamaged)
torso: ... (leather) an ice-coated leather cuirass (scuffed)
arms: .... (leather) some ice-coated leather vambraces (scuffed)
hands: ... (leather) a pair of ice-coated leather gloves (battered)
legs: .... (leather) some ice-coated leather greaves (undamaged)
feet: .... (leather) a pair of ice-coated boots (undamaged)

I believed that leather would not distract me from channeling as much, yet for some reason I lose channels like I'm wearing full plate (Every few seconds.) Kian brought up the point that I'm pulling up three channels, but I didn't face this problem earlier when I consistently pulled up three channels and maintained it without losing connection too often.
This problem might be caused by the fact that with my satchels, backpacks, and other things, my total encumbrance is 121.04. To my knowledge, channeling was only affected by armor weight and type, however.
Is this a recent change, or is it a bug?

No changes that I've done. I'll look into it.

Perhaps the ice coating adds to the armor, making it heavier and thus more likely to drop channels?

I've actually noticed a difference too. I had on some leather boots and no other armor and for some reason those darn boots kept interrupting my channeling. I wonder if this has something to do with the increased latency lately? Perhaps indirectly?

Oh and those boots were not ice covered. Just plain ol newbie boots that you get at character creation.

The numbers appear to be unchanged. Second and third channels are harder to maintain, the third being even harder than the second, so that's likely what you're experiencing. Ice-coating doesn't effect encumbrance rates (though honestly, it probably should, a little).