I think the real core of the problem is people reding Eternal and thinking that means immune from all change. I thought that until the end of my first season, then I logged into Eternal on day 1 of the next season with full on plans for that to be my main play environment, and went “Oh Eternal just means my character is parked here until I delete it.” I logged out and made a new seasonal char and haven’t looked back.
Well, I have logged into eternal once since to make sure all my boss mats are moved from characters into the stash and delete some characters and will again after S5 finishes to do the same. Having a ton of boss mats in the PTR was so nice. I plan to be even better prepared next time 