For me (whom sadly, many would happily slot into the "graphics whore" category), I remember looking at the game early in development thinking how god awfull it looked.
Then later on, getting closer to release, seeing beta screens and their own media they put out and thinking what an amazing job they had done turning it around.
Now the environments are okay (though I would love some more atmosphere from day/night and realtime lighting/shadowing), but the char model, gear texture and shadows we are getting are piss poor in todays standard and can be compared to AOC on low.