Well, I play EB because it is the hardest, in my oppinion best Mod around.
Realism isn´t that important to me and I will still play EB if there were fantasy units integrated in the game (I like the thought of fighting Amazons as elite units very much and miss the easteregg in RTW a little ).

Of course you can´t say that realism = fun in general but it is not so that you can say that realism is not fun either.

I like to play shooters too, especialy counterstrike and battlefield. But in these games it is still not realistic in extreme. You can still run and act normal with 1% heals as with 100% e.g. (Yes, they are still much more realistic than Unreal or Quake :P).

I like EB as it is now and the historic text infos are nice to read.
But Of course I still expect a much better gameplay with the next patches ^__^

BTW: Playing on VH battle settings has nothing to do with realism =)