[...]
The old settings were default, with the 250,000 byte limit, 27k for high-priority (regardless of fee).  The new settings we're trying (subject to change, and not on all servers yet) is 500kB block max size, no reserved space for no-fee transactions with high priority, and a minimum size set to 50 kB to grab high priority/no-fee transactions if there aren't that many unconfirmed paid transactions.