http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/ also started out as a one man job, for awhile. Similar ideas, but with a more realistic style. (although not necessarily a more interesting one)

Procedurally generated content is something I think needs to be taken more seriously now. If a game with the ridiculously large dev teams of most commercial mmos used procgen content to pad the slimmer areas of their games I think it could help a lot.
I don't think that you could ever really do better without designers and whatnot, but generated content will often look better than the half-assed content used to fill the less traveled areas of a game.

Procedurally generated content would be better, in my opinion, for fleshing out games than for replacing designers.