Destiny 2 players have no love for Mercury, even though they don't really have to go there anymore. In fact, there are quite a few who think it should be blown up to make space for another planet.
Admittedly, there's a lot Bungie got wrong with the follow up to the first installment of Destiny, which was indeed an incredible game. Destiny 2 is a great game too, especially now, but it simply did not live up to its predecessor's standards after getting released two years ago and its first expansion, Curse of Osiris, did very little to help.
The expansion dropped around three months after Destiny 2's launch and is based on a character from the original game called Osiris. Players were taken to Mercury to save Osiris from the Vex and, by extension, avert an unwanted future, all while catching up on the relationship between the old Warlock and his former protegee Ikora Rey.
The Devs Really Struck Out With This One
Sadly, the expansion happens to be the game's worst to date and it did not take much convincing to have players believe that development was rushed. What you got for your $35 was a two-hour campaign focused on destroying Vex, alongside an uninteresting character you likely forgot about as soon as it was done. The boss was as uninspiring as the story itself and that he took very little time to kill, which couldn't have been satisfying.
As if that wasn't poor enough, Osiris fails to stick around once you're done and vanishes completely, which is probably why no one remembers him.
On the brighter side, Mercury's Infinite Forest is pretty awesome. The mission makes it so that players move between the present, past and future, and all of the locations look great. The past is probably the best as it shows Guardians what the planet looked like prior to the Vex taking over - it's some really amazing scenery, to be fair. However, that hardly makes up for how poor of an expansion Curse of Osiris was, plus you'd get to see a similar location in full bloom during the Revelry event earlier this year anyway.
Why Keep Mercury Around?
If we're being honest here, Bungie has moved leaps and bounds since its first expansion. Those that followed, Warmind, Forsaken, and Shadowkeep have pretty much done justice and there's probably no reason to keep Mercury around anymore. So they don't have to actually blow it up, but most players probably won't miss it if it were to simply disappear.
Destiny 2 has also been slammed for being too much and it would probably be less overwhelming if a planet was removed. Of course, that would have to be Mercury and Bungie wouldn't even need to replace it.
Since Shadowkeep's release, there are a lot of new Guardians roaming around the Destiny 2 universe without having paid for the game, many thanks to New Light. The free-to-play version of the game has quite a lot of content despite not costing players anything and the Curse of Osiris happens to be part of it, which admittedly isn't that bad.
On the grand scale though, Destiny 2 wouldn't be any less interesting if Mercury were to be removed. Blowing it up would make it all the more exciting.