In a perfect world there would be an iRO classic and iRO renewal, both well maintained without bugs, and that would be that.
Personally, I think iRO Classic was a success, perhaps not in terms of longevity, but in terms of flow (It had a big boom, got popular, had a healthy WoE, and by the time battlegrounds came along it dwindled, and we left with some good memories). It might not be a bad idea to have a classic server that resets every 3-4 years, and transfer the accounts to Chaos at the end of the term with some sort of reward based on your level.
But I digress. I think a lot of us are looking at this new server as being a problem-for-problem, beat for beat flow of Chaos, when it's not impossible to imagine that there could be improvements. Last I.T. maintenance the notes said there was a hardware update. For all we know they brought in more reliable tech for the new server.