I use Lync in a business environment that serves thousands of users. I find the video quality excellent. Is 720p good enough for you? I think your clients just weren't using the latest version, or just lacked hardware that could handle the compression/decompression, lacked adequate bandwidth, or was just plain slow. (Bad ping times are an indication that the network is just not up to the task.)

I think the following article details how Lync 2013 handles video, and it certainly points that Lync 2013 itself is designed to handle high resolutions.

[Link: blog.schertz.name]

Don't know how or where you got your info, but it just appears wrong to me.