What's amazing to me is this is the same engine for both their 2D and 3D offerings.  Now it wouldn't be a huge stretch to re-populate the 2D rendering models used to create really nice 3D creatures/players.  Actually, they did that with UO-TD and people howeled.  Problem is they just didn't follow through with making sure the client was bug-free and intuitive.
I'd love to see the Iris people get a grant from EA to finish this one.  Basically the same client, but able to render both 2D and 3D.  Imagine that from EA?