How important is transmog to your leveling experience?

For me, being able to control my character’s look is close to all important when I’m playing World of Warcraft, especially when I’m leveling one of my new alts. I’ve grown very fond of my Lightforged Paladin in a short amount of time — I rolled him Monday and I’m writing this Wednesday night — and part of that is that I can now dress him in any gear available during original vanilla WoW, including raid gear from MC, BWL or AQ. As you can see, I’ve taken advantage of this face to make him look utterly ludicrous. But in a loving way. A way that says, “yes, those green shoulders look awful, but ain’t nobody going to beat this look for pure silliness.”

But I see a lot of people who don’t transmog — like, at all. And I genuinely don’t understand why. Is it money? Or were you just born with a heart full of… okay, that Futurama reference isn’t going to work here. The point is, if you’re like me, I want to know it — if you love transmog and it’s a big part of your leveling, let me know. And if you don’t transmog and don’t care, I’m seriously curious as to why not. Do you enjoy seeing what the leveling gear looks like? Do you just not care about cosmetic stuff? Why do you transmog or not transmog, whatever the case may be?

Because, seriously, doing Stonetalon results in every single piece of gear I get immediately being mogged over. That gear is just the worst. I do not like. And I don’t get how people can stand those old vanilla shoulders, because, man, they did not make good looking shoulders back then. You can really tell when a piece of gear dates back to vanilla vs. the Cataclysm revamp. The later gear all holds together, it kind of has a theme, and the shoulder pieces don’t look like they were art projects constructed with barbed wire and a hate for people’s ability to see.

I can’t imagine doing this without transmog, y’all. Am I alone in this feeling?