It's an important part, but how can you say it's the most important one..?   I thought gameplay was the #1 priority for everyone.

I can say this much to your defense though, that if you've played Heroes of Might & Magic III, there was this fandmade addon called "In the Wake of Gods" (or WoG for short) where you could disable animations and increase the battlespeed so when you clicked to attack an enemy stack the result was instant. I would never play with that option, multiplayer or not. Not gonna do it. Cool animations really helps with immersion and is something I really appreciate.

There will be Shader 4 stuff in the game though so I think you'll get what you want.

You're not using that phrase right and it appears you're just trying to throw big words into the discussion to make yourself look smart. My supposition is not a false dichotomy as I made no reference to a 'either/or' scenario. There are many many aspects to game development. Gameplay is one of them and I happen to think it is the most important one.

I very much agree that graphics enrich FPS games like Mass Effect and if your graphics are lackluster the quality of the game is at stake. However, in the RTS/TBS genre the quality of the game is very much in the eye of the beholder and their subjective opinions, I happen to think the game better be fun whether it has good graphics or not. 

How about Demigod? Did Demigod fail (and, yes, it did fail) because of the quality of animation? Absolutely not, that game is a beautiful game. Stunning in fact. It didn't even fail because of gameplay. The gameplay is great in that game. The game failed because of the many many problems with netcode and patching mishaps and bugs that still aren't fixed. I happen to love the game but it can be frustrating to play sometimes because of these connectivity issues and exploits people use.

Now, we can rephrase your assertions thusly:

'Will I enjoy seeing combat action as much as I do in King's Bounty?
This is the most important part of the game (to me), after all....'

Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 will cause a mass upgrade shift as number 1 most anticipated PC exclusives, so the number of people you are adapting the game for is really going to be irrelevantly marginal.

Of course, accumulative effect goes without saying, it's just that in many cases animation is key to gameplay enjoyment or gameplay annoyment.

Hortz you can't be serious. Gameplay elements [strategical / tactical] & diversity >>>> GFX anytime. Who the heck gives a damn about pretty graphics? Which game was your example? Ohhh right, King's Bounty.  Elemental will be a grand strategy game, unlike King's Bounty. Besides you cannot even compare these games at all. You can compare Elemental to AoW II. - SM maybe...but King's Bounty? You gotta be kidding. Also just one more thing. Ever heard about Dominions 3.? It's an awesome strategy game, which has crappy graphics. Real strategy gamers don't care about graphics. I don't even want to mention Dwarf Fortress.....

Come down from your happy world: by the time the game markets the world will continue to have a ton of SM 2.0 cards. And I can assure you that SM 2.0 limitations are a pain for developers (for example in lighting), but sadly they aren't going to disappear this year.

And btw, Kings Bounty is nice (not really anything special graphically but it works), but really, if you want animations so much, go play FIFA and learn what are GOOD animations.

That's right, because everyone on the planet cares SOOO much about those two games, they will all rush out to buy $5000 gaming rigs just to play them. I can see it now, in about 6 months everyone who plays PC games will have 16 GB of RAM, 2 TB of hardrive space, 5 ghz dual quad core processors, 5 GB of grahpics memory, and 32" monitors. Alienware will be out of stock for months trying to fill all the back orders.

With all the stupid claims you've made in this thread, it's hard to pick one that is the stupidest, but that one is up there. Everyone is obviously fithy rich, and will obviously purchase spur of the minute computer upgrades, obviously just for those games. Or are you offering to purchase these computers for everyone?