As I said, how they go about their stuff is none of my concern, I only care for what options are being offered to me, and the catch is that we don’t (yet?) get to decide when our characters are cloned/snapshotted, nor have they suggested such a possibility will be there at all on a later date. My fear is it won’t, because then they’d miss out on the money they could otherwise make from character boosts for earlier snapshotted (and thus lower level) characters. Unless they decide to set a price for a later snapshot/clone option… but this is just speculation right now.
UPDATE:
Hadn’t read this part, which as a matter of fact rules out what you misread and I was speculating about:
“Clones are created from a snapshot just prior to the Burning Crusade Classic pre-expansion patch and will not include any additional progress from that point on. This means that if you continue to play your WoW Classic character for some months after and unlock the clone at a later date, it will not include any additional progress past the point of the original capture of your character.”
I think Blizzard has tried to use words to make it easy to understand for everyone what behavior they expect to see in their characters, making a simplified explanation because after all, we don’t need to know how the process works in the background at the software level if it is good to discuss how it could be as a curiosity but that is, how it is done does not matter to us, what we should expect is what matters.
The copy could be made during a maintenance and leave both copies available on both servers and just wait for players to choose which one to enable or pay to enable both. In this case, the snapshot is not an entity that exists, it is just the moment the process is done in the background.
Or the copy could be made by creating a backup of the characters database on a maintenance and then when we choose to play on Classic or TBC the character is moved with the transfer system except it is not removed from that backup. In this case, the snapshot is an entity that exists, a database backup.
But in the end for us does not matter how is implemented, in one of those two options or maybe another way, the outcome for our characters is exactly the same.
The best thing they could possibly do, would be allow a player to clone their characters to the next expansion when they see it fit (at the same price of a boost, I personally wouldn’t mind). This way, players would be free to ‘reproduce’ the most wholesome leveling progress, 1-60 on Classic Era, then 60-70 on TBC (or TBC Era for when WotLK Classic should come), and so on. They would carry over their progress through all content and be happy about it. Blizzard takes their money, the players get what they want. It’s a win-win.
If they’re not gonna add this option by the time prepatch hits, then it’s a blatant moneygrubbing move, as their only reason to that would be to cash in on all those who only want to roll on TBC after they’re done developing their character(s) on Classic Era, and with the present state of things they could only do that through purchasing a boost (which would make them lose all their progress, however). Yet there’s no need to overlap options: offer a paid boost to those who want just that (if you really must…), but also offer a paid clone to the ones who’d like exactly that.
Don’t be punishing to your players (when it’s not necessary).
Blizzard: “You can now play Classic WoW for FREE as part of your current World of Warcraft subscription”
Also Blizzard: “TBC Classic is coming, you can now progress your character to Outland or alternatively you can stay in Classic however if you wish to do both you have to pay”
Absolutely disgusting tbh they should let you keep your Classic characters and offer a ONE time clone to TBC servers for each character. Making people choose between the two and charging them is just pure greed on top of every other micro transaction they have planned.
I have a strong feeling that we can trust in blizzards greed in that they will give us that “transfer at a later date”, they just dont want to announce it now because it would eat into the money they will make with clones