Back in 2001 it made more sense than today as the drum samples were worse.
Based on the video of the Roland E-drums I posted, I think it is really far-fetched to say that such drums would still lack realism if they were used in full quality in an arranger style. I think there are still much more significant things and sounds to be further improved than the minimal differences in sound between good e-drums played by a human and acoustic drums recorded by audio.
The real bottleneck when performing are the PA systems, which still don't succeed in giving the impression of a real drum set to be played in the room.