Looks certainly do matter, and for whatever reasons I still find myself loving the look of EQ on P1999, even though the graphics are quite obviously terrible. There's a greater than the sum of its parts thing going on. Advance T&L and shaders out the wazzoo don't mean anything if the game isn't fun, and they don't MAKE the game fun. Good graphics make a good game better. Usually they just hide a crap game like GW2.
To me it's about gameplay!! Heck I still play p1999 on my 4000.00 pc and guess what? I love the graphics! Granted it is 50 percent nostalgia...) I also play graphic intensive RPG and FPS's. What I am saying is that if the community flourishes and the game mechanics work it's a win win to me. Nice looking graphics are a plus however.
Another new pledge here as well. I've been following the development of Pantheon for awhile now and the Twitch stream gave me the faith I needed to see this project can be completed. Keep up the great work and I look forward to future streams! I'd also like to comment briefly on the UI as others have mentioned, and to this I feel the most important factor is the UX, graphic fidelity doesn't need to be top notch but it should flow well and work with the user not against. Too many modern MMOs like to bury information under tabs more tabs and other dialog boxes. Fluid and responsive is key here IMO.