Here’s what’s probably going to happen (although in all honesty we don’t know 100% until it needs to happen):
- Current worlds (let’s call them pre-alpha) don’t have the final resources or the most sophisticated terrain generation, and there’s no simple way to add those in once they’re live. So at some point we need new ones.
- At that point we’ll add some super new worlds with all resources (let’s call them alpha), cool generation and the complete suite of blocks.
- When we do this, those alpha worlds will appear in a new default ‘universe’, and the old pre-alpha worlds will co-exist in a legacy universe
- Blocks/inventories aren’t transferable between universes (some players large have stockpiles of rare resources that won’t be as prevalent in the finished game). You won’t be able to transfer blocks (there’s technical and balance reasons for doing this).
- Players will naturally migrate over to the new universe because it’ll have the new hotness, blocks and features.
- As we approach 1.0, we’ll prepare a fresh universe default (let’s call this beta) for everyone. At this point the alpha universe will become legacy and the pre-alpha universe will suffer a heat death.
- At 1.0 we may keep the beta universe, if significant balance changes are required we may move beta to legacy, put up a new launch universe and send alpha off to a heat death as well.
- Biscuits.
This is of course my speculation about what I expect will happen. We’ll always give plenty of notice if we do retire worlds, and where possible we’ll try to keep them alive.