Yeah, that's a bit of a turn off for me too, and I'm glad that pox moved away from the idea of representing a board game (the original concept was that it was a board game being played by immortal beings or something like that - a game representing a game, a la hearthstone). I would also love to see a bit more of an imaginative art style rather than the dry one he's gone for, I'm also not sure that appealing to what I assume is a fairly small and aging demographic of miniatures gamers is a good strategy... but I do respect that zero is making something that he is passionate about, and he wants to do it his way. But even after saying that, it still looks really good.
Gathering things is in human nature and the pvp part is so boring in the game with so few players so its only either campaigns or PvE for runes left or chat, but chat is even horrible in the new client so atm there are almost no reason to play or even login atm