This is what I think happened. At first VB was planned to be larger, and people who bought in first bought in with the idea that the fees would be spread around a larger number of members, points. When that didn't materialize and the resort was downsized, those people still had to be given what they were promised. Hence, the lesser fees.
Bobbi
PS. We first thought about DVC in 1996, but we really only concentrated on OKW when we thought about it. Had we known that in 2004, we were going to buy into VB, we could have saved us lots of Maintenance fees in the future. Oh well....