It's not like it's a big deal. AoC is built around end game progression material outside the f2p model, so it's not like most of the people who would have followed massively would have gotten past level 50 or so, decided to sub, and go into higher end game progression 6 months later.
The fact they are trying to rebalance pvp armor and progression and close the gap between unprogressed and progressed players IMO will bring many OLD players who enjoyed the game in past versions back. These are the people who will sub and add to the base, f2p players who just buff the population from time to time and only a handful of them might stay may look good on paper, but really don't do much for the game itself.
They need to market the rebalance of pvp weapons, accessories, and armor and make a point to let new, current, and past players know they are implementing pvp updates, that will bring a huge number of people back to at least look at what they have done and might even retain some, even if combo skipping is still gone and some of the older complaints are still there, I'm sure past pvpers would check out the pvp changes if it was announced outside the forums or games main web page.