Fox, opening the maelstrom when the storyline arc starts prior to their existence would defeat the purpose of having them in the storyline arc, wouldn't it?
The idea is not and has never been to take this game to sunset, it was to bring it back to a playable state like it was in live. Upon a few minutes further reflection, given the original definition back when it started what we have now meets that definition, but we don't want it to stop there. We want all the new stuff to work and be balanced. We have original documents to show us that all of this we have was planned for the game. For what that's worth those documents even talk of stats above 150 in addition to a whole other hull upgrade that was never implemented.
Right now we are one major system away from being able to go through and start the balancing. Once the balancing is done all the story we have will be layered on and that will be launch.
In direct regards to what you said, why shouldn't systems be added to provide more to explore and do? Many games have plenty that is not influenced by the primary story arc. What's so different about this one?