Essence split basically means that Jagex admits that it failed to prevent macroing. The split will negatively affect higher level runecrafters, legitimate f2p essence miners, mages, etc. Yet it does not solve a problem of macroing. Some macroers will still continue to mine regular ess and get less cash, others will buy 1-month memberships and mine as much as they can (the cost should not be difficult to cover, and leveling to mining lvl 30 can be done in 1-2 hours), others will switch to other things to mine or other skills to use.