Before I start, I think neither transmog nor sharding has a place in vanilla.
That being said, after some thinking of come to the conclusion that transmog is actually more vanilla than sharding. Transmog doesn't fracture the community, it may kill gear identity but that's still just a visual thing. Unlike sharding, it doesn't impact the open world gameplay. When it comes to world pvp, transmog does have some impact in that you can't get an idea of how good someone's gear is by looking at them, but it's still a lesser impact than sharding. You might not see that person at all if they are on a different shard.
If blizzard had to pick a non-vanilla feature they should have picked something with less of a negative impact on the game like transmog. I don't want transmog, but it's not as bad as sharding. And that's saying something.
#No sharding #No transmog