I am going to add my voice to those questioning this decision.



When I purchased AS membership originally, it had a number of significant advantages for me.

Free travel without the use of travel stones - no longer applicable

Free rent of houses (ie unlimited time on housing) - now removed.

Sockets - about to be removed.

Combat XP bonus - given the relatively small amount of combat I do, I can get the same xp bonus from rest xp. Yes the AS does currently add to that, but my point is I wouldn't really miss it if it wasn't there.

Village XP bonus - As far as the village xp is concerned, moving in to a larger village, which has a significantly large benefit in terms of the time spent crafting (and hence the rate of gaining levels) means I can gain a larger benefit by simply moving house than the AS membership affords me. (Unless my char is already in a large fully developed village, in which being there already gives me a greater benefit than the membership boost).

Shared vault - yes, this is still useful, but if it wasn't there it would be an inconvenience only.



Like the majority of posters above, I never use the repair globules, and rarely if ever need the full mana and full health potions. Personally I don't use the rezzies much either, so their loss doesn't bother me much, the same as the "wobbles" disappearing didn't bother me much at the time either.



At the time the membership was introduced, I was unable to take up the 10% discount offer, but for those who did, and therefore were paying the "legacy" 10 % discount (which I may point out, was stated as permanent at the time) a 1 month recurring membership was presumably $7.15 (7.95 - 0.80) which means the new price is just 15 cents lower than they were already paying. The value of the lost sockets alone is higher than that.



My major point however is this - since AS Membership was introduced, it has already been significantly lowered in value with the loss of major benefits (free travel, free rent, wobbles) and now will be further reduced by the removal of sockets and rezzies. The only addition in that time has been the increase in the xp bonus, which for many of the longer term players is of little or no concern.



On one of the recent livestreams, it was mentioned that the membership needed to be made more attractive. Believe me when I say that removing the sockets and rezzies whilst lowering the price by a small amount does NOT achieve that goal.