actually you can emulate nodoka, the things that are not being emulated are 4 dots on the range, tabs, the scrollbars and frames with different colors.
none of these features are planned to be included because I don't like them

Please consider posting a screenshot that shows an equivalent theme, so I can see how it compares. If you want, I can post or pastebin my theme (gtkrc) as it currently is, for reference. It's a bummer you won't be doing the scrollbars (since square ones clash with the rest of the theme, in my opinion), but for the other things you mentioned above, I'd have to see each in action to know if I like it. I do think the 'slider' controls are ugly, so I'd agree with that assessment. For the frames, I'm not sure what you mean, and for the tabs, I don't particularly care either way.

try setting style = NODOKA in your gtkrc

please reconsider the scrollbars. i really like nodoka's rounded scrollbars and would very much like to see them in murrine.

You can't implement those scrollbars without hacks, and I really don't want hacks in my code