Boomtown has posted a nice preview of "Seed: The Human Condition" that will give you a lot of backround information on this MMORPG in early development. Here is a snippet from the sneak peek:
Runestone have chosen a somewhat different graphical look for Seed, actually looking something like an interactive cartoon. The choice was made from the ideology that the graphic shouldn't be the essential element in the game, and that hardware demanding graphics needing ridiculously high-spec computers to run actually prevents some players from being able to run the game (*cough* EverQuest 2 *cough*).
Of course there's also a financial reasoning behind the choice of graphical style, as it's much cheaper to use this kind of engine than spending enormous amounts of cash developing a Doom 3-like engine - actually Runestone found the engine on the internet. Originally made to be used for development of PS2 and GameCube games there's a fee for using the engine to create games on those consoles - but it's totally free to use the engine for games only developed for the PC, even if the game should become a blockbuster. An offer it was hard to refuse.
You can read the full article at this link.
