I think your friend misinterpreted what was said in the Q&A. The way I understood it, you would still be able to receive gold from hidden chests; it would just not be in every single one. Instead, there would be more useful rewards such as gear and professions ingredients that would make powerful items.
Overall, it might even be easier for you and your friend to get gold. Not only will there be more chests, but non-graduates will be able to receive gold form them. Graduates will most likely have a harder time getting gold, but that will help with inflation of the server economy. Right now, maybe a dozen graduates go on chest runs each day, amassing an average of 1512.5 gold if they go to every chest, and even more off of the chocohop cards they sell. This can't be good for the economy to have so much gold floating in each day. This is why the exchange rate for gold to USD has gone from 100 to over 1000 in just a few years. At first, the gold you receive from the new chests will most likely be very small because of how inflated the economy is, but after a few weeks, I think it will adjust to accommodate the new gold-making methods.
If it is really true that he donates over $2000 to the server per year, I would like to thank him for helping keep the server running. But I think that it's a bit overreacting to quit something you love so much and have put so much time and money into just because of a change so small as making it more difficult to get gold.
