Something that I looked into was changing warp to make PvP much more enjoyable, as well as a bunch of procedurally generated NPC factions that automatically do stuff, in conjunction would encourage being a pirate. Uneven resource distribution is something that's been planned for a long time, and is already partially in, making war a significantly more viable thing, and with the NPC factions, will provide you with some enemies to war against.
We've all been desiring more reason/ways to PvP, and Schine recognizes them. They're developing the game at a nice rate, and don't have a deadline. They have no idea how long it could take, and they don't want to restrict themselves into a small timezone. They're adding more things into the game to allow for these new mechanics/features to implemented with ease in the future, and that can any amount of time between a couple of weeks to a decade. So for now, just lay patient, continue to wait for the update, it'll be out, when is unknown, but know that it's coming soon. :D
On a side note, removing planets entirely is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. No offence. The best thing to do is to optimize them even more, switching them to
this idea wouldn't reduce the lag (that'd be reliant upon the smart chunk/block loading) but would provide us with a nicer planet. If we're going to fix planets, then we need to replace them with something that's more pleasing. Not only that, but there're a bunch of fauna updates to come out for planets. :p