I have seen people try to recreate old xenimus several times. The one I remember most was going to be called Aion Online or something (which oddly enough is the name of the upcoming MMORPG by NCSoft) and I remember how much work went into that. The projects were always dropped after a certain amount of time, so when I heard about Project Volucris, I didn't have high hopes. I was definitely wrong though because the Alpha release of Evidyon is far superior to any of those projects and is actually really close to old school Xenimus.
Sure some things could be changed and more content would be nice, but I'm sure thats all being planned out. I think its pretty cool that we have a skilled enough programmer working on this and he actually listens to the community's ideas unlike someone else.
Damn good job so far Karl.