Re: OP. Well, this quashes thoughts of moving from DL to UA. Bravo!
It's also likely to make the year-end mileage runs a thing of the past, as needing to qualify on both PQDs and miles will be too much hassle for all except those right on the borderline. And if you have a lifetime status that is near or above what you would be busted down to with PQDs, there's no incentive to fly more at all.
We're seeing this move thanks to having only effectively three legacy carriers/alliances instead of 5 or 6. Pure and simple. The trend is toward U.S. passengers being treated as hub captives and not particularly well with FF programs, not unlike the Europeans and certain others who live in countries with a single dominant national carrier. Those airlines have long had less-generous FF policies for their own captives than in the U.S., and now U.S. carriers are converging on that.
For those of you who think there might be a silver lining or something in it if you can meet the requirements, puh-leeze. The same diminished competition that brought this in the first place also means they won't feel obligated to offer more. Most of their most frequent flyers are hub-captives and they know it. And if they do throw you some kind of bone, history shows it'll get yanked back with any hard times (fuel spike, something like SARS, etc.)
If AA doesn't plan to match then they should announce it. Otherwise the big winners are ULCCs/LCCs domestically (and increasingly internationally, with Air Asia X a model for long-range), Southwest (they seem to gain everytime something like this happens), and non-allied airlines that routinely are among the cheapest for certain routes.