it'd certainly be cool to look at

Well yeah it'd certainly be cool to look at. But one of the main purpouses of this game is to raid and acquire better gear to enhance your character. To many player's the way the gear looks matters alot(hence this thread).

But to have players who wow gold farming aren't that powerful look super powerful seems a little off to me.

Don't get me wrong I think the appearence tab is great but I think there needs to be limits on what you can change. Perhaps you need curret (cata) tier gear in order to skin it to older tier appearances?

Again this is just my .02 I'm not hating on the appearance tab, just giving my own personal feeback