Wether the fans and mod makers maintain their interest in their project is a good question, though. Let's hope so.
In theory, having a new WC game should raise interest in fan projects. It could create new fans, who will (hopefully) be interested in finding the older games and running them via DOSBox. And, those same newbies would likely also be interested in the fan made stuff.
If the WC franchise is resurrected in any serious way, what I'd really like to see is a WC collector’s edition... ALL of the WC games (I, SM1, SM2, II, SO1, SO2, Priv I, RF, III, IV, Priv II, Prophecy, and Secret Ops) remastered to run on modern computers.
Now, collectors editions usually have special bonuses that are included as part of the package. And, as a special bonus for this particular collector's edition - and as a way of thanking the WC community for staying loyal, and for all of their hard work - a nice touch would be to include a disk with the best "fan made WC" on it: Standoff, Saga, Pioneer (if it's finished before we're all in our 80s), ASCII Sector (which looks like it'll REALLY be good), etc.
Am I dreaming? Maybe. But, we all need our dreams.
I don't think we should be entirely surprised by apprehension.
Wing Commander is a kind of franchise. And franchises bring with them certain expectations. If I go to McDonalds, I expect the items I normally see on a McDonald's menu, not Arby's style roast beef sandwiches. Likewise, if I buy a WC game, there are certain things that I "expect" it to have.
Wing Commander Arena, at least on the surface, seems like a drastic departure from the "regular" WC formula that we're used to. For that reason, I guess a lot of people are afraid that it just won't be the game that they've been looking forward to since 1999, that it won't many similarities to the games that they fell in love with - that, in effect, they're going to go into McDonald's and be confronted with an Arby's menu.
That said, I do feel that we need to balance apprehension with an understanding that the world is not the same as it was in the early 1990s, and that WC will likely have to change in certain ways in order to survive.
Not all change is bad, and I'm willing to give EA a chance on this one. I just hope they're able to live up to their promise of delivering a game that's as satisfying for us "old timers" as it is for newbies.