So, I have an idea I want to throw at the table, bear with me while I explain.
Firstly, we know that Blizzard decided to make new Era Servers with the option to move there on TBC pre-patch day. My belief is the player base will be pretty small.
Secondly, there is also a playerbase that wants Fresh WoW Classic servers, which is also small.
The idea is influenced by Diablo 3.
Have the p6 forever servers yes.
Make new seasonal phase1 servers where you can copy your character and play the phases again.
You may ask what do you gain? I could give ideas similar to Diablo 3.
For example: Season1 30% more health on bosses. End of phase1 reward, a pet Ragnaros for your p6 character of choice.
This idea is work in progress and would like to see your thoughts.
Surely, a lot more people would play on the seasonal server and a lot less on the p6 server but you could have more than double the playerbase, that would go to private servers, to stay. Also, I don’t like it either and I contradict myself here but wouldn’t that be worth it?
The devs won’t take on more work. The TBC playerbase will not be small.
If they make a phase 1 realm it should be completely fresh, no transfers, and I think they may well do that in the future.
btw What are “Seasonal Servers”? I don’t play Diablo.
I think in the short term they need to focus on making sure that the TBC servers can handle the incoming wave of players.
In the long term, I think they should merge all of the classic era servers down into probably around 1-3 servers total and then create new fresh realms for every server that was there before.
So for example: If there are 10 classic era servers to begin with, merge them down to, let’s say, 2 then create 8 new fresh realms starting from phase 1. Something like that.
You keep the character progress in a different phase(or server theoritically for wow) and start from lvl1 again to clear the whole storyline. At the end of the season they give transmogs, pets and maybe more can’t remember. Then those are unlocked to your maxed out character.
As i told to another person , seasonal servers would great for the longetivity of each wow era
Fresh P1 servers every 2 years . Nothing big , 1 server per region . That get merged with the eternal servers some months after they reach P6
That is what i’d like and hope but it won’t happen . Servers cost money and we know what that means for blizz 
Seasonal play is 10000% times easier and with far less technical problems than Diablo
I get the appeal of “fresh” been there done that many times on Nost and successors.
At the same time, looking back to the insane amount of /played accumulated over the years, I guess only about 10-15% of it was spent at actual endgame. I did the pre raid bis farm dozens of times but I have never had full t3.
I am gonna stay where I am for a while and plan to keep playing my hunt+druid at the 60 cap once TBCC comes out (albeit at a reduced rate).
TBC playerbase will 100% be higher than classic, especially if you want to progress your character further 
But yeah, this is a bad idea in general due to the balancing and such
If you’re talking about bringing your P6 character into P1 with all the gear > repeat > it’ll be such a hassle to balance anything around it.
But the whole reason people wanted fresh to begin with was the leveling / original dungeon/gearing scene.
After all, first few months of classic was some of the best times
Nonono, idea is keep p6 char on another server. Seasonal servers starts your character again from starting zone lvl1. At the end of each phase you get some kind of reward that does not impact the game, to your p6 character.
Not a bad idea really. I think it will depend of the number of players that decide to Vanilla forever wether or not bliz would consider spending resources on Vanilla or just leave it as P6 servers forever, with a fresh server now and then.
Ohh, then the balancing would be very hard to do.
World buffs would basically 100% be more required, especially if you’re only buffing the hp of the bosses.
That’s just an example idea for a theme for season1, that would not alter the game, in an unwanted way in my mind, for a theme for season1 nothing more.
You can’t merge to less than 4: PvP, RP-PvP, Normal and RP That would create drama!
It can go as low as 2. Roleplaying realms can be merged with non-roleplaying realms, the first one lost Roleplaying status, it has been done before.
This would be murder!
You can’t murder a dead body. If they go as far as merging roleplaying realms can be merged with non-roleplaying realms it means the roleplaying realms at this point will be already dead.
Anway my point is that it has already been done by Blizzard, so we can’t say the minimun number of realms Blizzard will keep is 4.
I suppose it would be the other way around as the RP realms are more populated/popular than the other ones. And “Normal” players would hate to be merged with the RPing gang 
But then of course, ther are more nonRP realms.
Changing the order of factors does not change the product.
There are now, the question is how many realms will remaing after TBC launch. I am not sure how many will remain, and I believe not even Blizzard is sure about that, they will just wait for the release to see what happen to react.
it was an example. The specific numbers don’t matter
OK, Captain Obvious.