Well personally I think set is important, and will probally be kept, mainly for this reason (both VB and ASP related)
saying
this = that will not always work
for example
you cant say
RS = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset"

(or without the "Server. for VB"
basically without the set, it makes it rather hard to
set a variable as a reference of an object , rather than the value of the object.
now if it is true they are taking away set,I assume they are going to go for a more C++-like approach, or OOP in a way
of saying
(this is somewhat c++ in the way I am making the example)
*TheVariable = AddrOf(TheObject)
or something pointer-like. Which would be something new they talked about for the new VB. Karl Blessing aka kb244{fastHACK}