The planets I would love most to be updated with new areas

With the news that 7.3 would be taking us to a brand-new area on Voss, the fourth planet after Corellia, Belsavis, and most recently Manaan to receive an extra landing zone, one has to wonder what other planets would make for good secondary areas if BW were to add them. 

There are a handful of benefits to returning to a planet rather than always being shunted off to new ones. Primarily, you can have a new story that continues or perhaps even concludes elements of stories from the base-game, allowing players to see how that planet has moved on in the years since we left it behind without needing to change things on the original planet instance itself.

I still remember a lot of the changes made to the game to improve its flow in 4.0. Imperial Alderaan got chopped and changed quite a bit!

A new area also opens itself up to more exciting opportunities that would be very difficult to fit into an existing area, especially for universal faction-neutral entrances. A flashpoint or perhaps even a raid instance springs to mind; something that a single player or a group can pop along to that's tailor-made for that area. Then you have the bog-standard of weekly missions and potentially a reputation track, just to give people some reason to keep coming back to explore.

So, with this in mind, here are my picks for planets I'd like to have the opportunity to revisit at some point in the future:

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Alderaan

Big shock! Cal has selected their favourite in-game planet as the first option! 

This list is alphabetical, I swear!

Okay, so I do have more legitimate reason for selecting Alderaan as the top pick beyond my pure love for it (and the alphabetical nature of this list!), and that surrounds its planetary storylines.

Our efforts on Alderaan surround our respective faction's attempts to help or hinder the civil war on Alderaan. The Empire, of course, wants to put their puppet, House Thul, on the throne, while the Republic are doing their best to aid House Organa repel their rivals. The Jedi Consular plays a key role in attending a summit between all houses, and everyone has the opportunity to depose the mad king, Bouris Ulgo, from the throne.

After that, it all goes silent for the next, what, eight years in-universe? The next we hear of it is from Choza Raabat, who confirms when you first meet him to help take down the Star Fortress that the houses put their differences aside to help resist the Eternal Empire. I don't remember if he ever confirmed that anyone in particular took the throne, but since this is a plot point that heavily depended on whichever faction dethroned Bouris and whichever Panteer ends up supporting I wouldn't be surprised if it was just neatly moved away from. Again, silence after that point.

Well, here we are, what, five in-universe years after that point, and it would be wonderful to get a meaningful update on where things are at. Since Knights of the Fallen Empire, BioWare have really gone all out in making our characters' personal decisions have more significant impacts on their own personal galaxies, so... what would this mean for Alderaan?

I can quite easily see us returning to Alderaan and having an actually meaningful impact on the planet's government for the immediate future, whether it be actively sabotaging peace talks and getting a certain house ostracised or actually being truly responsible for deciding which house the next monarch belongs to rather than it just being by proxy. There is a lot of room here for the personal variations that BW are very keen on putting into their stories, and I can see them having a lot of fun with it.

Decent amount of wiggle-room for saboteur activities as well!

While I can't deny I would much prefer a 'straighter' story continuation for Alderaan that didn't result in all of our characters seeing different outcomes, I think the time for that kind of story sadly is no more. 

It would doubtless be interesting to see what became of the various houses and the nobles we helped (imagine a trooper reuniting with a now-healthy Markus Thul!), so regardless of the path they go down I'm sure I'd be all over returning to this storyline if they were to do so.

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Hutta, Korriban, Ord Mantell, and Tython

It was announced early on in 7.0 that the plan is / was to take us back to these planets for some new story content to revisit our characters' roots, and while it would be interesting to return to a potentially visually-remastered version of all these locations, it would be wonderful to get newer areas with stories specific to the classes that started there.

I'm not really sure what there would be to do on Hutta, although I'd love to meet the new head of the Hutt Cartel at last. Ord Mantell I can see there being something to do with the separatist movement if it decided to rear its head again. Korriban, maybe there's a new Sith Academy and the overseers are wheeling our Sith in to gauge its worthiness, allowing inquisitors a chance to play the role of Harkun to a group of wannabes if they really wanted.

For Tython, I'm not really sure, since we don't really know what became of the current Jedi Temple. If it gets destroyed or heavily damaged, I can maybe see us being tasked to find a location for a new one, same with a new Forge if that also got damaged, but I'm not really sure how that could easily be split between knight and consular. Hmm.

Regardless, I would love to get the options to explore different areas of these locations and get actual content that refers back to our base classes somehow at the same time, even if just for one quest. Rishi's class snippets are, after all, still some of my favourite post-vanilla content to have been released, and I would love to get something similar again.

I'm very interested in learning more about what BW's plans for us to revisit these planets may eventually consist of. I really hope they haven't been delayed indefinitely for whatever reason and that we will get to experience them during this expansion, but time shall tell.

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Makeb

So... we kinda just left Makeb in its semi-exploded state. Does anyone really know what became of it since...?

I'm beginning to notice a bit of a theme with a couple of these planets. The story I would like to see on them is to do with how the planetary governments have adapted to the current status quo and what impact we as players can have on things. Eh, I guess it's what happens when a bit of the story focuses on that concept!

That said, I am legitimately curious to know what has happened with Makeb. Have the refugees returned to it, doing their best to resettle if after the Hutts' occupation, or has it just been left alone all these years for fear that the reparations are only temporary?

Since the Empire is able to supply entire fleets with Isotope-5, logic dictates that the planet is still stable enough to mine from, so even if we as players can have little to do with helping or hindering the people of Makeb and their attempts to resettle, surely striking at the heart of the Imperial war machine somehow would be a story worth telling. Actually make the Republic the aggressors this time, don't just leave us as always being invaded by the Empire!

It probably could work, as long as there are no long quest chains to do with mining platforms again!

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Ziost

Ziost is an interesting case, as we have technically already experienced two different versions of it already. The 'living' version, where we pursue Tenebrae and attempt to stop him, and the 'dead' version, after Tenebrae has already consumed it.

So what would be the point of returning? The answer to that lies in the form of another planet consumed by Tenebrae; Nathema.

After the death of Tenebrae's 'contemporary' self in his guise of Valkorion, life returned to Nathema, causing long-dead plants and trees to blossom and for the void-like atmosphere to return to normal. The same is likely true of Ziost, which could possibly be in the early stages of rebuilding.

This does, however, pose two problems for a new area. Firstly, of course, this would present by far the biggest dissonance between the state of the planet as it exists today and the hypothetical newer area. Planets like Corellia, Belsavis, and Voss of course have an established aesthetic which is kept in their newer areas, and Manaan at least tries to replicate its own established look while adding a lot of quite frankly ugly scaffolding. 

Ziost, however? You could easily hop from a dead, lifeless planet that looks like it'll never, ever recover, to a flourishing world with a slowly rebuilding society, and back again like there was no tomorrow. I know that SWTOR kinda keeps its current planet instances frozen in time with the exception of when the Star Fortresses were added to six of them, but this really would be a bizarre phenomenon.

The second issue is... what story could you tell? With a planet like Alderaan, it's fairly obvious; Alderaan is still a relatively major player in the galaxy and House Thul coming to the throne for real would give the Empire an actual foothold in the Core Worlds, something that could really present a credible threat in the current state of things.

Ziost, however? A story isn't as obvious other than the rebuilding of society and the formation of a fledgling government. I guess one could say that that would be the perfect carte blanche; rather than wanting to stick purely with the Empire - y'know, after their Emperor himself consumed the planet - they could try to create a more neutral government to reflect how heroes of the Republic potentially helped - or tried to help - during the incident, and that would be the driving force behind the new story; the Empire obviously wouldn't want the Republic to gain a foothold in their space, nor would the Republic likely want to lose the opportunity to really be a force for good in helping a devastated planet rebuild.

Plus, while it has been seven or eight in-universe years since Tenebrae consumed Ziost, it has only been three years since his death. Would that really be enough time for a fledgling government to be set up, if indeed anyone's actually discovered that Ziost is inhabitable again?

I have questions about how it could work, but I cannot deny that I really would like to see how Ziost has regained life much like Nathema has.

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I should state as a disclaimer after all of this that I am, of course, not opposed to continuing to get new planets added to the roster, as Star Wars is one big, vast galaxy, and paradoxically I do feel that returning to certain locations time and time again does make the galaxy feel a lot smaller. That said, since SWTOR's timeline is constantly evolving along a strict narrative and we are much more involved in the planets in this game than we are when watching a movie or television show, I feel there is a lot more wiggle-room in returning to a planet here than there are in other parts of the franchise.

Hey, at least you can focus on more specific parts you find interesting, even on a planet like Tatooine, and explore things at your own pace. There's a lot to be said for not always being subjected to certain locations and constantly expected to care for them. 

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This is just a short little list of the planets I would like to see most, and can see the more obvious story beats for. That's not to say that I see no reason to revisit other planets that aren't mentioned, like seeing how Balmorra and Taris are faring after their respective storylines have concluded; these are just the most obvious ones to me.

I also have to acknowledge my bias against Zakuul here. I'm sure that, if they wanted, BW could come up with an interesting story and reason behind visiting Zakuul again but, honestly, after Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne I am still just so sick and tired of dealing with that blasted world that any notion of revisiting it would not elicit much by way of a joyous response from me. 

Returning to planets I would like to revisit again, funnily enough, prior to 7.3 Voss itself would have been on this list. Indeed, I have touted it as a planet I would like to revisit in at least one previous blog entry. Much like the upcoming update, my interests lay in seeing how the Gormak and Voss are co-existing following the siege by the Eternal Empire, and I am thrilled that a decent part of the story, as well as the follow-up one-time and daily missions, are focused on that somehow.

So maybe, just maybe, I may get my wish some day with at least one other planet on this list. Who knows?

How about you? Which current in-game planet(s) would you like to see get updated with a newer area to visit?