GGG said early access standard will stay seperate to normal standard on release, but it wouldn’t surprise me if its not forever. 99% of players don’t touch standard. Part of the fun for the majority is a fresh economy with new things.

Because that’s how these kinds of games work

GGG stated it beforehand, and it’s absolutely logical. Standard league is separated from temporary leagues because it’s got all the legacy items and wealth from previous leagues. Imagine printing thousands of divines in poorly balanced snake temple and then letting that wealth to be accessible in the upcoming league? And EA Standard being separated from regular Standard makes sense as well, because EA legacy is going to contain a lot of unobtainable items created under poorly balanced EA version of the game. Fresh leagues exist specifically to have an even playing ground for everyone.

I highly recommend just starting a character when 0.5 launches, but I can almost assure you that you will start a new character each league. Most people who aren’t familiar with the genre are averse to starting a new character especially after their first one. But the more experienced you get, you’ll be making a new character each league, it’s the best part of the genre and you’ll never be able to experience the new classes or content on launch like the rest of the playerbase. Plus the economy is dead in standard.

At this point of time, your character will automatically migrate to the early access standard server, where you can play that character anytime you want. This does not prevent it from maybe being “bricked” at some point in the future, if a patch disables an abililty/item or changes how some things interact.

The very much recommended and intended way would be to play in the fresh league whenever it starts anew. That can seem a hard cut if you are not used to it, but playing in standard can be very miserable at times since there are 1) not many players to interact with and 2) the market in standard goes even weirder and crazier than in leagues, since noone cares about anything on standard.

If by “self sufficient” you mean that you are playing solo self found, then my last point doesnt really apply to you. but the first one does, you can play your characters as long as they are not broken by a patch.

And as others said, there will be a real new “standard” as soon as Early Access ends, which will then be the default that characters migrate into after a league. If the “Early Access Realm” survives forever isn’t 100% safe i would say, GGG once said it will stay, but who knows, it’s early access in the end.

The thing is, if you play standard, you will get to experience some new content now and then as it gets merged to standard, but once you have fully progressed your character, there isn’t really anything to progress.

Don’t look at starting a new character as starting over, with how GGG changes things during leagues it is experiencing a new way of playing. Each area has the new league mechanic appearing, and it makes the entire leveling experience different enough to feel interesting (imo most of the time). You get access to new tools, new things to explore.

You can, but you don’t have to level with the same character or skills. Sometimes there is a new unique appearing which you find looks interesting for your character. Then there is the concept of mastery. Campaign goes from taking you two weeks to taking you 3 days to get through. You get better at it, you learn when to push forward and where you need different boosts in character power. You learn new tricks on how to power your character.

In PoE you are never starting over, your characters might do, but you as a player amasses a bunch of knowledge that makes each time slightly different.

You learn how to craft yourself weapons to make yourself faster in campaign, how to craft boots or gloves, then some new currency comes out and you find ways to use that.