As a refugee from the doomed City of Heroes universe, I must admit transmogrification seems to slap a band aid on the whole notion of making players grind for gear that looks like everyone else's gear. CoH (and to be fair Champs Online) simply let you design your own look "Gear" modifies the numbers, but not the look.
Oh there were "premium" pieces if you wanted to display a given achievement in terms of costume (I wore the Incarnate belt on my 50s who got Incarnate levels) but basically, as must be the case in a comic book hero setting, you set your look the way you wanted and the game did not mess with it. Heck, some power sets were modified to not display graphic effects because of complaints that they messed with the character design.
That's more to my taste than the ability to make any mass-produced piece of gear you own look like some other mass-produced piece of gear you own.