Interesting.

The answer to that question/riddle was "I don't know", but a common thing in PvP in games such as this is that one can visually identify the relative power of an opponent based on sight. Someone coming at me in high allagan gear, I know he has some experience under his belt, but I see a guy in the highest PvP gear, I know he has more.

You can throw out military deception and all that fun stuff to justify why you should and I agree. That said, the above is generally the reason why vanity anything tends to be shut down during PvP.