Sex sells. I'm not going into the utter idiocy of having every male character show off his muscles and every female character show off her cleavage in every single movie/comic/game. This pattern's existence and its stupidity are assumed. This is a post about a possible compromise between quality and mass-appeal for MMOs.
Armour should always look like armour, including cloth gear for spellcasters. It should not look like it's made to show off. Players should also not be able to cosmetically alter their gear, in general. Being able to identify a player's armour quality at a glance is a logical part of MMO battlefield target priorities.
Still, cosmetic items are now too much a part of virtual life. Even i must confess a certain fondness for my characters' appearance, even if i'm purposely making them look like beggars. Within limits, dressing up is a logical requirement of social games. As much as i hate it, any game that actually wants to sell will have to make some minor allowance for pretty dresses and shiny, gold-plated, gigantic spaulders. We should, however, limit cosmetic items to towns. They should always be on a player, probably un-lootable if the game involves player corpse looting, but they should only be enabled in certain areas, such as inside a guild hall or within the confines of a city, player-owned or otherwise.
Actually, here's a nice possibility: allow city-owning guilds to pass sumptuary laws within the confines of their towns.
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