Yeah it kinda depends exactly what you mean by "realism". 

In terms of real-seeming-but-fantasy, AoC is still king. 

But at times, especially in terms of environment (if not characters) LOTRO does give it a run for its money, especially with DX11 water and shadows (it's got the most breathtakingly realistic sun-dappled foresty swamp in all game creation atm in the south of the Lonelands, forget the area). 

Vanguard too, although somewhat dated, has its moments.  Not all the area graphics for that game were properly finished, but some of the bits that are are still extraordinary on max everything on a modern comp.  The wood elf tree city area is absolutely stunning maxed-out.  Some of the armour too, looks great close up, when all settings are maxed out (incl Shader 3.0 iirc, that has to be done in the .ini file).

However, in terms of realistic as in "everyday" realism (i.e. non fantasy), Fallen Earth, maxed out, is hard to beat - it's almost as good as Fallout 3 sometimes, and that's saying something for an MMO.   Great detail on characters, armour, weapons, great "clutter", environment, etc.

As with Vanguard, though, you do have to tweak FE a fair bit to get the most out of it graphically - it looks pretty shit out of the box on default settings - and like Vanguard it's a hog that needs a full-on modern comp to really shine graphically and still be playable.

Coming up far to the rear is a fully-tweaked-and-maxed EQ2 (again, requires putting Shader 3.0 on and having GPU shadows, not things that come with the default settings).  Environment is a bit too blocky to be really "realistic", but some of the armour looks pretty good at middle distances.

However, I should add here something that was a real surprise - the new character creator in EVE Online has to be seen to be believed.  It's the first step to their "walking in stations" (where you can be the avatar pilot, rather than just a ship, in the game), and boy is it something special.  You can "sculpt" your avatar and pose it and light it, in order to make a portrait, and that's about it, but the level of realism in the models and animation is probably the best yet in any videogame ever, including single player games.  Whether they'll be able to carry that level of realism over to the actual walking in stations bit remains to be seen, but as a face/body character creator it's a technical triumph.

Wow how can no one say APB? 

I vote APB

Edit:

Someone else said apb on first page.   But yah.  Hands down APB.

Who cares about walking in stations? That thing will be used in World of Darkness ;)

APB? Lol,! Are you on acid?

I would say mortal online.

Originally posted by Xasapis

Who cares about walking in stations? That thing will be used in World of Darkness ;)

LOL ... does anyone else have a sinking feeling that vampires are going to go out of fashion by the time WoD comes out? :)

Originally posted by FreedomBlade

APB? Lol,! Are you on acid?

I would say mortal online.

 

I have to ask you....Are YOU on acid?  Have you even tried or seen APB? 

I played it on max graphics and I havent seen graphics as realistic as that in an mmo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WhOTrc5554

and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj2rYxqtqBc

vs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvzATD4vxn8

Originally posted by Castillle

Originally posted by FreedomBlade

APB? Lol,! Are you on acid?

I would say mortal online.

 

I have to ask you....Are YOU on acid?  Have you even tried or seen APB? 

I played it on max graphics and I havent seen graphics as realistic as that in an mmo.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WhOTrc5554

and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj2rYxqtqBc

vs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvzATD4vxn8

 

Wow.. thats crazy.. APB wins!

AoC. It both have good and realistic art tigether with a very high polygon count and really good lightning effects.

FF XIV and AION are both pretty but I wouldn't say realistic and I frankly think AoC looks better than both anyways.

Vanguard

Not sure what you mean by realism. Do you mean the grass in the game looks like the grass outside?  Cos every game I've seen, even Crysis 2, shows a bunch of pixels on the ground.  As for best graphics, it'd definitely be FFXIV.  The bloody thing requires a GTX460 ffs, that's ridiculous for a MMO, too bad it's so horrible.  I seriously wish they'd make it f2p for lolz.