Have you ever played MK3? Jax and Kung Lao were most certainly in that. Remember Jax's fatality where he grows to 100 feet and stomps his opponent? Yeah, that was in MK3. And it's also the first game he had metal arms.

No, I think he's saying that Jax and Kung Lao were carried over from MK2, and so were Smoke and Noob Saibot. Kitana, Mileena, Baraka, and Reptile were not (he's not including UMK3).

Honestly, I don't know. I think it's too soon to tell, because character reception matters. If MKX happens and majority of the new characters are disliked, they'll probably be dropped. If the characters are mostly liked, then they might stick around.

What we're talking about here is the law of diminishing returns. Less characters got brought over because less and less characters were worth bringing over. These 4 new characters are already 100x better than a most of the MK4-MKD crew.

Oh gotcha; the first part said only Goro, Kano, and Sonya weren't carried over to MK2, so I thought he meant Kung Lao, Jax, Noob and Smoke weren't carried over from MK2 to 3.

I believe Ive heard Ed say they dropped Sonya and Kano from MK2 because they were the least played characters from MK1. I would assum the same could apply. If people play 'em, they'll come back.

NRS are better at character design and execution now than during DA and Deception. That will give these new characters a great start.

The more new characters, the more chances many of them won't return for the next game.

If there are 10+ then I'd only expect 3 or 4 to make it into the next game, the rest will probably never be seen again.

And the pattern continues...

Yeah I'm not counting UMK or MKG. MK3 is the game that followed MK2. MK4 followed MK3. MKX follows MK9(2011).

Its not just about leaving behind poor characters, Kitana, Mileena both didn't make it for MK3. Took fan backlash to get UMK3 with a roster that people liked.

If that were to happen today they'd just be DLC characters. (UMK3 added what 9 characters? Today that'd be 2 season passes + an extra one.)

Hell it took Ermac until MKD to appear in an initial roster for a MK game. Rain in Armageddon.

A lot of people seem to like the new characters, it will be sad if NRS decides to drop them. Which appears to be likely unless Ed Boon & co. have completely changed their mind, which I doubt.

Only 15/43 characters have appeared in the following game (about 35%). Hell right now that would only be 1 of the revealed new comers would appear in MK11.

Cassie? Kotal? Ferra/Torr? D'Vorah? Chances are some will not be in MK11.