Before crying too much, I suggest to look at the perceived reality in a couple of months from now and discuss whether we will in deed experience a difference.
It remains to be seen, to what degree the FM's go strictly by the grading list or continue to grade LH status customers beforehand regardless.
There is probably also insufficient insight on this board what other factors impact the grading list and to what degree RM is manually pre-sorting the grading list days before the flight.
The other thing is, as Rambuster said, opup experience was overhyped during the economic crisis and some people might have become addicted to that experience, but are probably more and more doomed for disappointment.
I personally don't feel comfortable betting on opups if I really want to fly C instead of Y. On recent TATL bookings (not NYC though...) I had the opposite experience that even a confirmed M&M instrument upgrade was impossible due to overbooked C and this on alternate routings and in a couple of days in a row!
Opup chances nowadays are only safe on routes with weak C and heavily oversold Y booking situation. Y classes zeroed out on FlightStats or EF is not always an indicator that OpUps are going to happen.
I did gamble on an OpUp on a Q fare last year on a Y0 TATL flight, yet the FM insisted at the gate that she will only upgrade against miles, as Y was JUST completely full but did not run over. So in cases like this I am happier burning my miles for a confirmed upgrade beforehand with better chance of grabbing a convertible C seat!
What I find annoying also is, when on heavily overbooked flights they do the grading in the hour before departure of the long haul at FRA, while they let you check in for the connecting flight in MUC and offer you the upgrade for miles, even on the most expensive Y-fare (in a case where confirmed upgrade was impossible beforehand). Then when you arrive at the gate you see BPs for blue members getting upgraded.
Then again, LH is enhancing such routes with weak C and overbooked Y such as MUC-CAI by replacing the combi BBJ with a NEK'ed 321@:-)