If you come up with a feasible way to fit 12 segments and generate 18k miles with "2-3 trips per year", do let me know. I'm currently doing 5 (though I'd usually do 4, or sometimes just 3) and I see it as a long stretch to try and fit even more of them in my year.
Actually, they've ever so slightly increased the gold benefits (2000 birthday miles and -50% on extra legroom, headingwest free standard seat selection was already a benefit).

Given how it turned out, why should they change the way the vouchers are used? Even platinums only get 4 and even these just 4 vouchers per platinum are as "guaranteed" as everyone else's. So 1 voucher per segment, even long-haul (which I hope they won't exclude, after all they're going to have many C seats in that plane and they'll be quite expensive too), definitely seems fair to me.

I replied to a pm yesterday, where I was asked to take a guess. I still honestly thought, that gold wouldn't change at all, since the other scenario I was seeing was an increase of miles required to retain gold to 18k. And in this case I wrote "then reaching gold has to go to 36k with A3 flights or 72k without, 72k is basically exactly what was posted here as the platinum threshold, so why would gold and platinum require the same amount of miles?"
But yeah, I did not assume that miles required for retention would go to 75% of what is required to reach it (in order to both not raise the threshold to upgrade and to simultaneously raise the threshold to retain by 50%)!
And I certainly would have never guessed, that they'd now be asking for 12 segments instead of 4! A similar 50% increase would be 6 segments, but even 8 segments would have been "OK".

18k is a bit high, but I would hit it by going just slightly out of my way. The 12 segments should do it though. I don't think I'm going to be able to sustain that number, certainly not by my current flying habits.

I am a bit lucky, as my anniversary is at the end of September, so I'm already good until September 2027 with the old criteria (I guess I should finally enjoy some good fortune, after having received exactly zero free tier extensions during the pandemic, despite reaching silver in 2020 and gold in 2021) and I am planning a significantly higher number of flights within 2027 (extended leave), so I am optimistic, that I'll make it to 2028. After this, I'll have to decide if the perks are still worth it for me (hopefully there will be more information on how ATH should look like, ergo new lounge etc.), essentially forcing a segment run or two per year, where I normally wouldn't have any (my regular travel was already meeting the gold requirements).

I never was a true frequent flyer and this will very likely remain this way, at least until I retire, so I do realize that I am among the ones, that shouldn't normally be holding any gold tiers with anybody. But as I've written a couple of times, some of the perks have actually been taking a good amount of stress off of my shoulders (I coincidentally became gold a few months after our kids were born), so I won't give up just yet (when the time comes, where none of my calculations make it worth the additional cost and where I can come up with back-up plans, then I'll drop it).

Quick question, since I haven't seen anything in this regard: Will platinum members "soft-land" on the gold tier, when not able to retain platinum? Or do they go straight to silver, if during their platinum year they don't even gather 18k + 12x (for gold retention)?