While it is possible that a wipe may be necessary, the devs are going to do their best to not have to wipe.
I’ve been playing since August and in that time, there have been two worlds which have been wiped, both of which were player submitted.
The first was due to the seed being changed so a wipe was inevitable.
The second was because the world in question was set up in a way that the engine wasn’t originally designed to allow so only a small part of it was rendered. The devs then added support for that method and relaunched that world for the Steam release.
I believe that where possible, the intent is to add new worlds rather than reset old ones.