Hi Chris,
I am facing a similar predicament. The problem I am facing is that, initially all agents receive the email notifications, but all further email notifications for that ticket thread is restricted to the ticket owner and the person who has put in the comments. Ideally, it would have been a great feature to have wherein the ticket owner (upon logging new ticket) would have some kind of provision to choose the “Ticket Watchers”(which can be a list box having the departments, teams…etc), and that all updates (including the ticket status updates) happening for that ticket is notified (via email) to the ticket watchers.