No new planets please!

[Aethusa]

I don't think so...

 

There can be new planets oriented with endgame content.

 

And we really need serious server merging operations.

[DataBeaver]

I am a big proponent of adding some bounty style mission hubs that allow us to add missions to some of these planets and send them to our friends. A good reward idea might also be a commendation that is usable for some kind of unique guild rewards.

The bounties would have to come from the player's own pocket though, and as such necessarily be one-off affairs. Creating normal quests where the money comes from nowhere is too prone to abuse. Maybe this would be something for the insanely rich to burn their money on, I don't know.

 

There's also the fact that players can't really add new areas or mobs in the game, so the amount of new quests that could be added is rather limited. It would basically amount to killing this or that boss enemy, with a bonus quest of killing a bunch of his henchmen.

 

As for having the storyline provide incentives for players to return to planets later, that would probably splinter it too much. As the game is designed now, most planets span four levels. Keeping the storyline the same length but having multiple visits to the same planets at different points would mean one of two things: either the duration of each visit would be cut to half or less, which would make finding groups for heroics even more difficult as people would spend less time on the planet at the appropriate level range, or the number of planets in the game would have to be reduced, depriving us of some of the distinct environments.

 

Extending the storyline with new content for the same planets would be doable, but I'm doubtful of whether that would really help with increasing the population on planets and turn them into social hubs. The main problem seems to be that many people see leveling as a necessary evil, a chore they must do to reach the endgame content. Adding a new level 50-54 area on Tatooine (for example) would see a huge influx of players there for a while as all the current level 50s race to reach the new max level, but after a week or two it would die down again. There simply isn't any reason for anyone to socialize on the planets, since all endgame content is based on the fleet, which just happens to be intended as the main social hub of the game.