I retain most of my objections to EVAL-ALWAYS (specifically the need to consider which phases you need and why), but if my understanding of the way XCVB introduces more cases where it is needed is mostly-correct, I think I can live with it in Alexandria. DEFUN-ALWAYS I'm much more skeptical about.
My assumption of XCBV needs here is that simple XCVBification of a system introduces new cases where EVAL-WHEN is needed, and :cload-depends-on &co are possibly a hammer too big. If these dependencies are always a sufficient tool, then I'm not so sure it is really needed.
In either case, I'm not going to cry out against it very hard. DEFCLASS* I still take a firm stand on. :)
(I do agree foo-syntax.lisp and foo.lisp (or early-foo.lisp and foo.lisp -- whatever) style has much to recommend itself.)
Cheers,
-- Nikodemus