It’s nice that the Crysis effect isn’t applied to every game — that is to say, not everything that comes out thinks it needs to leapfrog the system requirements of its competitors.
Warhammer Online is a property that is aiming squarely at the uncommitted World of Warcraft crowd (and there are plenty), tabletop RPGers, and old-school gamers. These are three groups that probably don’t have the best rig set up and are unlikely to upgrade. They made the right choice (as Blizzard did) when they decided to tailor the game’s graphics to, essentially, off-the-shelf PC spec.