Doubtful.
In the vBulletin CMS? Doubtful. It doesn't have anything to do with vBAdvanced.

Maybe he meant modules that provide similar functions ?

So far from the sounds of it this upgrade should be called vBulletin 3.9 not 4.0.

I am kind of disappointed with the announcement.

I'm worried it's becoming a jack of all trades, master of none. It was the best forum software about a year ago. I'm not so sure now. Hopefully search will improve from being the total embarrassment it is now.

I could do without cms/seo totally - I've seen vb's take on blogs so I dread to think what they think is a good cms. If the seo cuts down on stupid duplicate content then great - friendly urls don't bother me or google. Hopefully the improved templating system will make it easier to use the vb engine without their shitty bodywork.

SEO...finally. Im too broke to afford vbSEO :P

My point is the attitude (apparently mind you) that we bring nothing to the table and have no reason to expect to be participants in development is a major concern.

At some point, "participation" begins to blur the line between that and "developer". They've taken our requests into consideration, that's why a lot of the desired features are being added. But we can only be so involved before our "participation" becomes counterproductive.

I hope it will be easy to convert the style's..

I think having a program with select design alpha/beta testers makes good business sense. Those of us who produce designs for a living and focus on that aspect of vBulletin have a unique insight into the needs of the vB end user and market trends that vB won't have. Strengthening this relationship can only benefit each party while inaction does nothing but damage the skin producers.

simple answer: nope.. prepare yourself right now, ask your designer to transform your style to be simplier based on CSS... and you will have ease of transfer then.

styles with millions of tables is so obsolete anyway, if you have a complex design, it's not only because of vB 4.0 that you have to redesign, but because of the web itself.