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Did the EVE graphics upgrade cost players?
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Nope.
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Well of course it wouldn't since there's minimal work involved with upgrading the graphics of space ships, which have little if none animation
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I played EVE at the time, many of the ships have animations of one sort or another. But the real work was hcnaging low poly models for high poly models and retexturing everything. On top of that they also retextured and or upgraded the models of most of the things you see in space (not planets, moons or stars) stations, gates, junk, cans and such like.
I can't remeber how many things they said had been updated but it was a fair amount. Not that it has anything to do with this case as CoH is running on a different engine and some of the things that EVE does easily wouldn't be easy on CoH and vica versa.
EVE however had to have it's engine redone quite a bit - The people running the "classic" EVE are also running the new engine, actually. Just with less fluff.
CoH however "only" has to add some shaders and new models and textures, if i understood the dev comment right "that the engine can do so much more". It's comparable, in that EVE had more programming and less direct content, but CoH has more direct content and less programming to do to upgrade.
I disagree that CoH/V still looks great.
This is my only and biggest grip with the game: it looks old.
And you can't compare it to WoW because Wow is stylized. It's the textures that makes it nice looking after so many years (for the record I played it briefly. Never got to the end because the game annoys me - so I ain't biased).
CoH is not stylized. It has a generic look. 
The character models, the zones.. most of it, in my opinion, needs more depth. Which probably means rounder models.The buildings are flat, the models looks kinda square and clunky.
I'd leave the power FX alone though, as they are very nice and abundant in game. No need to add more particle effects either.
If you look around:
Guild Wars looks great.
WAR has fleshed out models.
Champions Online has a zest of cell shading and that's refreshing.
DCUO previews fleshed out and shader'd models...
Even if you don't compare it to any other MMO out there, as it stands on its own, it's missing depth.
I agree something needs to be done. Specially in a game where individuality is key. I mean you want your toon to be the best looking with the best details.
Now I understand that due to the character creator's intricacies it would be a tough job and could create more trouble than it's probably worth (as in, if it ain't broken, don't fix it). But if they are doing it, I hope they don't only just add new gimmicks like water ripples...
it just needs some modern tweaking, hair looks like plastic lego hair and a lot of costumes are just unfinished.
and then you have the issue with models, which is more a problem for weaker computers, but lowering the texture quality in lower settings might fix that issue.
one thing i do think has to be updated are the texture choices, maybe as an option somewhere but i like to see some high quality world textures.
i have some power to burn, but the game is a bit like a black/white movie for my vid card.
it can always be a very last thing, a toggle if your pc can take it, just like to see the world have some eye candy new players would enjoy.
A graphics overhaul only need effect the client side of the game so could be delivered via a microtransaction style upgrade leaving some players with and some without depending on the capability of their machines. Things like the Wedding and good vs evil pack show that even revisiting existing outfits with a bit of bump mapping and texturing substantial improvements can be made.
Ironically thanks to the enormous LAG introduced in the development of MMO's by WoW newer games dont actually look much better as they always pander to low end systems. CoH/V holds up well and looks better in many cases than the newer AoC and WAR games.