The only experience I have is with Runescape, which sprouted an offshoot called “Old School Runescape” for those who wanted the classic experience.

Only, it turned out those players didn’t really want the classic experience. What they wanted was to cherry-pick the updates they get to the game. So rather than a live version that gets regular updates, and a classic version encased in amber, they had two versions that got regular updates - at some point, the “Old School” even got more updates than the “live” version. And because they have features that work differently, each update that is applied to both versions needs twice the man-hours.

So, how long would people really be happy with a version of Conan Exiles that didn’t get updates? Because let’s be honest, Funcom can’t produce new content with an acceptable level of quality control to one version of the game, so making updates to two versions is right out of the question.