For the most part, I suspect you're unlikely to get anyone admitting that XP is a major motivation — even in those cases where it is. There are, I'm sure, exceptions, but the cultural social pressure here at PerlMonks tends to dissuade admission of XP relevance to anything.

That aside, I personally wasn't affected by it. I had gone through a period of absence from PerlMonks for a variety of reasons, then returned to discover that everything had changed. I returned to posting without any consideration for those changes in particular, because they didn't happen during a time that I was in a position to notice. The likelihood of it motivating me in some way was greatly reduced in comparison to someone who had already attained the rank of "Saint", in any case, since I had not already reached a glass ceiling of sorts.

I hope the changes induce more of the upper-level Perl Monks to participate more fully in discussion here, as my whole purpose for being here is to learn, and I probably have more to learn on average from them than from others (all else being equal). If not, however, I certainly don't think the changes will demotivate them much in that regard.