Do aesthetics control your game decisions?

One of the reasons I play Warriors so much is the look and feel of the class — great giant weapons, head to toe metal armor, shields like car doors slammed into faces. There’s a grim and grimy aesthetic to how it plays, and the recent changes to our combat animations play up the brutality of attacks like Rampage or Colossus Smash in a way I really enjoy. Even though I enjoy my Death Knight, I prefer the mud and blood caked soldier aesthetic to the necromancy, the skeletons and disease thing.

This has me wondering if I’m unusual in this regard. If you’re a Paladin player, for example, how much of it is rooted in the look and feel of the class? Do you play a Hunter just for the pets and if so, which pets? The whys behind player decisions aren’t always rooted in which does the best DPS or which is the best tank, because some classes would get abandoned fairly quickly if that were the case.

Why do you play what you do, is it purely efficiency based or do you chose form over function? And do those decisions apply only to WoW, or are you apt to make the same ones in different titles? Are you always going to be a die-hard Warrior, Rogue, Paladin, etc, regardless of the game?