Serious concerns around Mischief hype and popularity....

Absolutely not. Live and TLP aren't that fundamentally different. There's no reason to decouple them. If you're building up a fresh server architecture it should be built to support both models. They're deviated by a rules engine and database-driven attributes, not by functional code differences. When it is ready to deploy, then you have modern server architecture for both Live and TLP with only a marginal increase in initial development cost to support both.

I'm an enterprise architect for my company.

This is not a question of enterprise architecture. Its marketing, its always marketing. No one here needs to know how to do it, its not a complicated matter. What is complicated is how to get past funding. They need a new start that generates income. The market is a modern classic TLP without all the flaws. Building from the ground floor up is the way to do that and they will need to keep live until they can finish the project.

Salty Tears taste good

I don't even know where to start tackling all of what you just said there, so I'm just going to drop it and not spiral off topic.

TLP's go through the same cycle as Live servers, and eventually become Live servers. Making them separate code bases is a terrible idea.

It sure is. IF we cared about live. No one playing TLP is here to play live one day. Sorry , this is just more EQ indoctrination jargon. They been trying to float TLP players into live for a long time and its clear where the fan base is. Stop drinking the coolaid.

It doesn't matter what you care about, they are responsible for maintaining the game for all players. As it turns out, other people play this game too, who knew? If you want to pretend the game doesn't exist past PoP and just keep restarting every year, go ahead. But don't pretend that everybody does that.

Phinny and Selo proved that there is at least some players who want to play at least until Live. How many continue to play on a live server afterwards is something only DBG knows. Miragul, Ragefire ,Coirnav and Mangler continue to truck along with players also. To say no one is playing TLP to play live one day is false.

I plan to wait and let your heathens sort it all out, farm up some nice gear to sell. Then come in with my korona bucks and buy some decent gear kill Fippy a few times. Log off think ill be back next time im off. then see something shiny and never log back on.