Few questions

[Estu]

You can change your hairstyle upon creation by changing your face - different faces sometimes have different hairstyles.

Definitely read up on the newbie guide: http://wiki.project1999.com/Players:Newbie

For mages, it's not super-important what race you go. Erudites are good because they have the highest starting INT. Dark elves are good because they get Hide. I'd put all your stat points into INT and any remaining ones into STA (although the HP gain from STA for a caster is very small).

One thing to keep in mind as you play your mage is that you will only get 50% of the EXP from killing a monster if you are soloing it and your pet does over half the total damage to it. The best way to get around this, other than grouping, is to cast Reclaim Energy to destroy your pet when the monster is almost dead, then use a cheap nuke to finish it off, and then summon a new pet.