This! 100% this!
I am in a similar situation. I really, really love the Old World. I 've never played WFB but i always had a soft spot for the lore, the novels and the dark fantasy feel of the warhammer world. How could i not? I grew up with Hero Quest after all!
I am currently running a campaign of WFRP 4th edition and me, and my players who are mostly new to warhammer, are loving it.
But this announcement, it is one of the few that i feel, excludes me as a consumer. My main games are AoS and 40k, but i also collect Underworlds, play warcry and i also started a small ork squadron for aeronautica. A lot of stuff and no time to properly play and enjoy everything unfortunately. And well, i can only speak from my area but there are many fellow gamers in the same situation, where for each new game GW puts out, there is one that gets dropped in order for the new one to get played.
I know that most would say that AoS is well established and is not in danger etc and i really hope you are correct but allow me to think otherwise. Here, in Greece where i am located, the vast majority of AoS players are WFB veterans who are, from the comments i saw today, already preparing to jump ship.
I am not going to reiterate RexHavoc's excellent analysis for the possible negatives of this development. Allow me to mention something that i noticed in last weeks Black Library Event. How many new AoS titles got announced? I think only two, one anthology with a story by Bill King(Yeah!) and a Lady Olynder novel. Nothing else... And the great Josh Reynolds has said in this forum that he hasn't written something for Age of Sigmar for a while. For someone who is invested in the lore of the realms, this was a huge dissapointment.
Sometimes i think that AoS is a playground for the model designers, some where they can unleash their creativity unbound by the limits of the Old World. But the writers, the novelists, the loremasters, the creators of great maps, unforgetable characters and gripping storylines, were and still are in the Empire and in the Chaos Wastes and in Khemri and all the other places we know so much better that everything in AoS until now, even though so much time of development has passed.
Gold
I love AOS, it has potential
But the speed for it to make sense, though there is indeed progress, is too slow