The Proposal:
The concept is to enable players to change their endgame appearance without affecting their ability to play, since WoW is a very gear-biased game. This has boiled down to the Appearance Tab proposal.
Appearance Tab - An additional tab in the Character pane in which a character is free to equip items in the body slots (Head, Shoulders, Chest, Shirt, Tabard, Bracers, Gloves, Belt, Pants, Boots, Cape). These items do not contribute stats or armor or any special abilities (+spellpower, agility, etc), and serve only to overwrite the model of the items equipped in the Character pane, customizing the in-game model with whatever look it is you want.
you can only equip items in the Tab that are the same type as the weapons you have equipped. Sword, Sword and Board, dual swords, staff, and so on. None of this 'Equipped 2-hander, displaying sword and shield' nonsense.
Official Response from the dev team would be nice..
