Do you have anything you can point to that said the system was scrapped entirely? My understanding the plan was delayed because the dev responsible for it died unexpectedly. I haven't seen anything to suggest that what will be proposed soon is completely different than last year. Although it may be.
It SEEMS like it was scrapped, but no one knows 100%. When they previewed the horrible 12-month plan (that I hated in multiple ways), there was so much backlash that they took it back to the drawing board before the dev that was working on it passed away. No one even knew that's who was working on it until months afterwards when people brought up VIP again. Then, they said that it was delayed/on the back burner because the dev working on it had passed.
I have a thread in my sig where I compiled lots and lots of peoples' suggestions to improve VIP. Really hope 1 or more make it to whatever's coming. I REALLY hope they don't try some convoluted mess like the first draft, or even the 12 month of dragon stuff that's already confusing people by being the last week of the month and no info on later stuff.
The first draft was trying too hard to be a battlepass, but it didn't have all the good parts of it, and had all the bad stuff. It didn't make sense at all. It's kind of like the tumble changes. They had an issue with tumble, so they changed it, but people didn't like that, so they went in a completely different direction and now we're all dealing with that.
Starting at lv 4 after TR would be nice, but needs a bit more. Even just giving us a bit more of what VIP already gives would be fine. More points/month, bigger xp boost, maybe not needing hearts to reincarnate (other than + hearts)? Getting tokens and heart seeds isn't hard, it's just a time sink.
That's what VIP should be helping with, speeding the game along. People always argue that people like me want to NOT play the game, but really I want to play the game without feeling like I'm just doing busywork for a lot of stuff. Running to every quest, sharing quests 1 at a time, flagging for raids every life, etc. All of these would be easy VIP perks that would save a lot of time and wouldn't be p2w.