Looks aren't everything (but they are a lot)

Thank the gods for the Wardrobe feature.

With the exception of games like City of Heroes, where a look can be fully defined at the point of character creation, RIFT has the best appearance system I've seen in an MMO.  New visual options are automatically added to the library when an item is picked up, and the tooltip will show before selecting a quest reward if it's a look that's already been collected.  Changes can be made at any time and saved in sets, and best of all - with the exception of additional set slots - it doesn't cost anything.

That last point is important, as wardrobe/transmog/appearance features are often heavily monetised by F2P MMOs.  Once upon a time this was widely encouraged, with the idea that games should not 'sell power' in their cash shops.  Seeing as just about every title does exactly that now, directly or indirectly, I don't see that argument being made so often now.

Most games do offer some version of their appearance system for free, with greater or lesser restrictions to encourage those visits to the cash shop.  Guild Wars 2 is one of the less generous, and I've been using the few transmutation charges I've picked up in that game very sparingly indeed.  At least using dyes is free, so it is possible to maintain some level of visual consistency.

Star Wars: The Old Republic isn't as restrictive as GW2, but does charge for hiding the head slot - a move that rather characteristically of that game seems intended to irritate the player into the shop.  On the other hand the levelling in SWTOR is so unbalanced I can pass up on actually equipping any headgear in the certain knowledge that I don't need the stats it provides.

In other games maintaining a character's appearance is less costly but more inconvenient.  Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft both require a certain amount of inventory management to retain a particular look, which can be time-consuming during levelling when new gear is being acquired upon completion of every other quest.

So the ease of doing all of this in RIFT is appreciated, because the look of my character is something that does matter to me.  After all I'm going to be looking at them for a very long time if I see them through to max level and the endgame beyond.  The last time I did prioritise survival over style was during my run of Fallen Earth last year, and that was only because I was playing against the clock in my attempt to hit max level before the game shut down.  Even then I did swap it all out for something more comfortable in my final day in the game.

I lean toward simpler outfits in most games, which does make me more or less immune to the lure of the overly elaborate and showy gear that usually makes it into the cash shop.  I held onto my starter gear in World of Warcraft for as long as I could reasonably do so - and would have kept it longer if it were possible to transmog grey/white gear - and I'm still wearing slight variations of the gear I either started with or picked up within the first hour or two of LOTRO, GW2 and Neverwinter... and RIFT.

I'm just glad the option exists.  There's a nostalgic charm - and a lot of So-Bad-It's-Good - to the eye bleedingly awful clownsuits of classic WoW, but I wouldn't give up any of the available wardrobe systems I've talked about if it meant returning to that era of multi-coloured fashion disasters.