Are the mogs from the plunder event meant to actually appear?

Cause I’m not seeing them in retail. Or are they just for the npc in the plunder event itself?

Renown 40 here. Yes, they are all there; it just so happens that the only one that appears in your full set list, is the Plunderlord’s Finery; all others are there just as individual appearance pieces.

Edit: The default set appearance is in retail though obtainable only through the Trading Post.

Sometimes relogging also fixes it, happened to me.

They do, yeah. To get the Plunderlord title, apparently you have to go into a Plunderstorm game with the Plunderlord title equipped before you could use it on Retail. Also only a few of the items are pulled to the ‘top’ of the appearances list, some like the dagger, calcified claymore, and blacksteel saber are buried with the old stuff. And strangely enough, the Cutlass is a 2h sword and not a 1h one.