Hi John,
I am sorry for all the confusion we caused you. Let me address a few things to clear things up.
First and foremost, the File > New Vault feature being removed was a bug in the 6.6 release. This will be fixed and brought back in a future update.
As for your first point about providing an in app purchase option alongside local storage options for new users, this is possible already in 6.6. You simply click More Options from the setup screen and then create a local vault.
The 6.6 release was a free update for all users and iCloud and WLAN Sync and Dropbox syncing all continue to work fine alongside our new 1Password memberships. If you ever find a bug, please let us know.