City of Heroes/Villains. It's usually cheap, about 20-30 bucks for the whole game (including expansions because they merged it all into one game) and it's probably the best Superhero/Supervillain MMO on the market. Well, there's also a "real" expansion coming out soon, for which you'd have to pay. But it adds a lot of cool shit.
It's about the same age as WoW, maybe a bit younger, and it has awesome customizable powers and costumes, and about a year ago they added Architect system which allows you to create your own missions and stuff. Fully customizable. It's like creating an instance in WoW, except you can actually do it.
There are no armor/weapons except whatever you pick for your power sets and your costume, which you can change (the costume, not the main powersets) easily. So you will not be stuck wearing ugly combination of gear in that game, ever. You improve powers through enhancements, and there are multiple sets of those, and they have no visual impact.
Oh yeah, the PvP is somewhat limited, but overall the game is awesome. A lot of customization, probably the most customizable MMO on the market. And the graphics aren't bad, if you have really new computer there's an option to make them look even better (because, yeah, the game was made in like 2005).
Oh ya, and subscription fee is the same as WoW.