fred9989 - 11:30 am on Apr 25, 2012 (gmt 0)

Absolutely same here - years old authority sites, regularly updated, non spammy in every way - all gone. Of course over the years there have been the odd drops (-950s and other penalties on one or two sites) - but never such a massacre.
My new blogs have generally gone too, even though (I judge) they were non spammy and contained useful information.
I'm not playing the "I'm special and my sites really were different" card; I'm just reflecting, as objectively as I can, that what I see on all my searches looks like an attack on spam that has gone horribly wrong.
Old blogs, spammy blogs relying on the old buying backlinks techiques, way out of date articles, ranking for inaccurate search terms, and so on. This is non vintage Google of the lowest order.
And now I need to find something else to do to earn a living!
Ah well. What an interesting 14 years it's been!