Using the overworld sprites in battle is definitive decision or just temporary?
disclaimer: All statements here CAN be changed by time....however unlikely it seems to me atm.
lets just say that we would rather use the current system than the model system
[1[2]]
The spinning camera though is here to stay and is basically the way we hope everyone will come to enjoy the game
I will remind that content packs support increasing the rez of all sprites and textures!
if you find a willing and able spriter to do it you could up the sprites to 64x64, 128x128, 111x111, 287x287 or any other random size you want
[1](due to programing limitations animations would be EXTREMELY hard if not not completely not worth the effort
[2](I am sure it is possible but nilllzz once said something along the lines of a multi hour google search on how to do it(in the current set up we have, obviously it works for some set ups since models else where

) turned up nothing.)
So from what we can tell either adding models to our current set up would be really hard
or we would have to convert to a new set up(which might, btw, include changing programming languages which is never fun....))
[2]We would be more willing to overcome these programming limitations or atleast give research time to finding solutions if we thought that we could find someone to do the models....we did leave content pack support for models so if someone wants to try finishing what we started them go ahead

If we find that there is enough support for it from the community we MIGHT dedicate time to it...MAYBE