Custom Server Design: Epic Weapons

[Drajor]

Heyas. I have had this idea rolling around in my head for a while now and wanted to share it to get other player/designer opinions.
The idea is this, epic weapons on custom servers are a poor and lazy design choice.

I guess a good place to start is to try and describe what is an epic weapon, what makes it epic? If you played during Kunark/Velious you will probably know that epic weapons were rare/uncommon. The players that had them were in a guild that raided at least weekly, the quests were long and the rewards were great.
So an epic weapon in my opinion must be both rare and powerful. Think of your favourite custom server, would you consider an epic weapon to be rare? Chances are no, everyone has them. They are common and mandatory. They are certainly powerful, but they are not epic.

Ok, so with a definition of what is an epic established. Lets look at some of the side effects of having these non-epic epic weapons in the server design.

The first side effect is the impact it has on diversity. Log into your favourite custom server, 9 out of 10 warriors are all using the same weapons. For good reason too, these weapons are generally the most powerful, of course everyone is going to have one or is in the process of getting one.
This is a shame because there are hundreds of really cool weapon graphics available to designers but instead we see 10-20. Boring.

The second side effect is the devaluation of the designers work by channelling all players into epic weapons. The designer probably spent a lot of time making all kinds of other weapons available as loot or through crafting but chances are no one will really consider using them, because they are not 'epic'. So all that work is essentially wasted. There is still an illusion of choice for the player, but really there is no choice, you need to get your epic.

I will leave it at that for now and wait for some feedback!