"I play this game to have fun, which should mean customizing my own appearance to what *I* want it to be. Being forced into some small subset of gear because an artist I've never met and never specifically requested the work of might get their feelings hurt? Honeyplease."

But this didnt bother you all these years that your choices were based on the stats, not look? I mean, unless you're an avid RPer who runs around at 85 in lvl 40-theme-armour, it seems pretty early (2-3 days after the news came out) to already complain that your choices are limited, when this system has just been announced.
If this is so important, how did you cope with there not even BEING much of a choice all this time?
To a certain degree, you have been forced all these years, and now that there WILL be more choices, which should be rather good news if those kind of personal choices are so incredibly important to you, people already complain.
Its incredible to me that now that this system is being worked on, people already complain about limitations (I am actually glad about it, because I dunno whether I wanna see half the raid wearing invisible cloaks and robes or slap the boss with fish), especially when Blizz says "fairly conservative rules, so that we can get it up and running as soon as possible and make fun improvements down the road".
What they DO talk about much more specifically is silly stuff like the fish, broom, pan etc. Is THAT what is bothering you?