Is it possible to confirm rather or not we will have to lose our current perks in order to obtain the Prestige Perks?

This is a big point of concern for me since it doesn't sound very fun to level a class without it's mechanics and builds to play around with.

I'm an old fan from back when World War Z was fairly new and the reason I dropped the game was because I didn't get to enjoy and play with builds due to constantly lvling for access to prestige perks that I never got to enjoy due to losing access to them if I wanted to make it to the next prestige lvl.