If they're not environments to be used in the game, then quite frankly, I find them utterly worthless. I don't need books full of things just to explain where fire elementals come from, I need books full of things that will be present in my games.
If you go the "Let's plan a day trip into the Plane of Fire!" route, which requires you to be fully prepared (load up on all this fire resistance stuff). If you had your villain flee near the end of an adventure and they just followed him from the ancient evil temple onto the Plane of Fire, they would simply die. Their entire usefulness is predicated solely upon the DM informing the players ahead of time so that they can have all the proper potions, scrolls, and such ready.
That's just lame.
In the Great Wheel, you had a predefined number of planes, and if you wanted to add new deities, you had to shoehorn then into pre-existing planes (which is why the elf gods hang with the Greek gods who hang with Sune, etc.), whereas with the new setup, you just toss in your god's new, unique realm without worrying about that nonsense.
As for the Positive/Negative Energy Planes (ugh, something I always found to be utterly ridiculous, simply to explain why healing is conjuration of positive energy), that's not that difficult either... there are verdant places within the Elemental Tempest in which the growth of life accelerates (positive energy), and near the hole torn by the Abyss are places in which life has been leached away (negative energy). The other four inner planes are already represented without having to be lame like "This is a plane of solid rock. Unless you have a bunch of spells ready, you plane shift and are entombed permanently."
Was this supposed to be directed towards me? If so, please do me a favor and re-read my post, since I never mentioned this nonsense.
