I know I am not alone in boosting cell load distance to get a slightly more reasonable view distance, but boy does it take a toll (obviously). I also don't think distant statics is going to be worked on anytime soon. Even once shadows are done, the focus will be on 1.0 and immediately important post-1.0 stuff (as it should be). In the meantime, it would be nice to have something that cuts down on the performance impact of getting some extra view distance. I get reasonable performance with cell load = 2, but think it looks best with 3, which I think would be achievable without all the other things that get loaded.
I am obviously no expert, but simply loading the statics a few cells out seems like a relatively simple task, so don't think it would take too much dev time away from the rest of what should be worked on. Absent of a real technical reason, such as needing to completely restructure the way cell information is loaded, I see no reason to not do this and a lot of people would be VERY happy.