by the time this thing actually DOES come out, it'll likely
be a last ditch effort to try and recoup some of the costs
that went into making it to begin with.

It's commendable to wait until the product is ready before
releasing it. However, too long of delay and you risk
using an outdated graphics engine that will definitely
expose it's age the moment it's released.

On the plus side, a TRS-80 will probably run it in
full resolution at about 120 FPS

Gameplay > graphism.

Good point but not yet applicable to DF. This past year they revamped the graphics so they bought themselves some more time.

Make this post again 6 months from now and i'll reply with a "yeah, DF has it all but it sure is gonna kinda suck playing in such poor graphics."

By that time Age of conan will be out and that game has beautiful landscape. The eye candy of AoC alone will keep many softies from switching over to DF unless they surprise us with an equally beautiful game (and the DF devs actually claim their world will be amazingly beautiful... we'll see!)

There's nothing wrong with Diablo 2 quality graphics =) Seriously!

Ok so maybe there is for some people.. but it just doesn't bother me tbh. If the gameplay is there then I'm there!