It's still a better solution than right now, basically being locked into 1 set for appearance. So for the short term, you are limited to crit crafted sets, which lower level ones will be more common, but eventually since they are planning on introducing an option to add augment slots to current gear, you will have the flexibility to use any moddable sets.
As far as having multiple options, I played WoW for years and you were always locked into the current raid tier sets unless you wanted to gimp your stats. Even in the 1.2 plan, you will have a fairly decent variety of options for appearance, and once they add the ability to add in augment slots and craft orange gear with raid appearances, you will have an ever growing set of options for appearances.
So wah, its going to be something of a credit sink. Raiding has ALWAYS been a credit sink in every game. Big deal. At least you get customization options this way.