They already have license to an engine that will do that quite well - if, as has been bandied about constantly, SA is just an *upgrade* to the KR engine, then it's the Gamebryo engine, which more than a couple of dev houses have done marvelous things with (see Divinity 2 for a good example, by Larian Studios).Someone's done the same thing with Fallout and Fallout 2. They're actually surprisingly good.
Thing is though, if ever a UO2 project were to get anywhere off the ground, it would have to be based on a good 3rd person perspective, fully three dimensional environment.
Personally, my preference is always for the quality of the content, user interface, and gameplay, over quality of graphics - every time.
The engine itself is fully scalable, and can be dumbed down enough to run on a P4, and kicked up enough to test a quad core or better with SLI 9800's or better. It's that flexible.
The fact that somebody thought it was a good idea to make the current SA client this...ummm... weak... well, I dunno. I don't want to make any claims like certain factions at EA want to see UO fail or anything like that, but...
The very simple fact is, whoever decided to use the engine they have in this manner either didn't understand what they had under the hood, didn't want to do the work to make it what it could be, or, as some have claimed, are trying to cater to a group of people that wanted it the way that it is. I personally think it's 1 and 2, with 3 being the scapegoat.
