I have only been on next island, one or two times and those times ive just been there for a few hours. So i cant say I'm a expert on Next island or what some of you see as great in NI, i do however think there is tremendous potential in the concept of a paradise planet.
That being said i feel that the way they went about it was a little, well, off. Personally i think it would be far better in a development sense, economically and in terms of story relating to the already existing Entropia style to go for a BSG Cloud 9 combined with ST Enterprice holo deck type thing.
On a concept level of course, i don't mean that someone should copy BSG and ST, but using the characteristics of the two would keep the current feature set of NI complete and also potentially add a lot more to it. The Cloud 9 part of things would explain the reasoning for the open world(but with a limit) and the holo deck type thing would explain the ability to travel in time.
On a story design level this would be pure gold. It would be very easy to add grey and black layers to a story in this type of environment without ruining the pristine toto - Africa type feeling that i always got from watching the promotional content from NI.
If designed in two layers, one within the Eco dome and one within the spaceship environment someone who prefer to experience a story line with grey or even dark sides could occupy the spaceship areas and someone who enjoys the more white, noble story lines would occupy the Eco dome area.
It would be much cheaper to develop with basically zero graphical drawbacks, it would most likely be more stable if designed right. And if things go well there is plenty of story driven reasons to expand the "planet" simply by opening a previously inaccessible part of the ship that has either been previously inaccessible but can now be accessed or newly constructed for some reason.
On top of the benefits to the internal development of the "planet" it could also add a new very much needed layer to space in Entropia. Apart from being a ridiculously cool floating planet/spaceship hybrid it could be a form of transport in the universe. Lets say that this planetship
)) would slowly fly across the universe making a complete round trip of the universe in say 1-2 weeks it would not interfere with trade in a serious manner but rather connect the universe in a different way.
A person could be on the planetship hunting/mining/crafting, using the holo deck to "time travel", decorate his/her apartment or simply sit around in the spaceship pub just like on all other planets but in addition to that, upon each login(provided you are a casual player who doesn't camp Entropia all day every day
) you would arrive at a new planet to explore for a few hours before you head back to the planetship before you log out and on next login there is again a new area to find out about.
I got a endless amount of ideas on the subject but this post is quickly turning into a mighty wall'o text so ill stop
.
In closing i guess what im trying to say is:
The concept of a paradise planet is a good one but i think it would be far better suited for Entropia if constructed in a manner like i have described above, i don't think that changing ownership will change the eventual, unfortunate fate of NI, it would need a significant re-think.
PS. I don't mean it to be like the asteroid or CP but a actual planet.
Best regards and a happy new year!
Zweshi