Are graphical upgrades a waste of dev resources?

"Everyday we take the Massive daily posts and bring them to Dragoon discussions. We would like to thank Massively for their original content."

You all know the adage, so say it with me: gameplay > graphics. While most of us appreciate pretty pixels, high resolutions, and slickly mo-capped animations, many of us would also point out that these bells and whistles pale in comparison to fun game mechanics and the staying power of a well-designed MMORPG.

Recently, both Aion and Age of Conan decided to tweak their visual engines, despite the fact that both games are less than three years out of the gate and considered by many to be among the cream of the current MMO graphical crop. Funcom's proprietary Dreamworld platform already provided realistic character renders and animations (and AoC's terrain graphics are no slouch, either), while Aion's ethereal aesthetic was augmented by a peerless character creation system that allows players to create life-like approximations of actual people in exacting detail.

While we'll stop short of complaining about progress, we do have to wonder why dev time and resources were diverted from content production (or grind reduction) and devoted to overhauling what were already some of the best-looking MMOs on the market. For today's Daily Grind, we'd like to get your take on the upgrades -- are they welcome, or do you feel that dev resources could've been better spent elsewhere?

TH