We have not received permission from Mag7spy to share the quoted post.
I find it a bit funny that our views differ in this way, yet you give examples that really support my view. I look at Uniques as if they are already legends at the time of them dropping. So examples of one ring and anakin's saber are those exact legends. Those items had a huuuge history exactly because they were held by a super powerful ONE person for a damn long time (their respective stories just had different time scales of course).
To me, that ONE person would be exactly the one whose name would be used when talking about the item (one ring doesn't quite fit this, but I hope you get my point). But you want the post-legend story w/o the legend itself. Would one ring really be cool if it was taken from sauron before he properly used its power? Would anakin's saber be all that cool and meaningful if it was taken from him before he became Vader (let alone did all the cool shit)?
Imo they wouldn't be, because they wouldn't have garnered the legendary status yet. Yes, the game calls them legendary be default, because that's how games work currently, but to me sandbox (or sandpark in AoC's case) games are about player-made stories. And there can be no real story if the item keeps changing hands every so often.
In L2 there'd sometimes be these hugely OEd items, that would be widely known because they'd stand out from the crowd of enemies (due to their bright glow). And most of the time they'd stay on one player and that player's name would be synonymous with their weapon's strength. And due to the short-lived nature of some private servers, that player would leave the server soon enough. And there'd usually be 2 ways of leaving: you either OE your stuff till you burn it or you give it away. The former was always a spectacle because it'd be done publicly in the most popular town, while the latter would obviously transfer the power to a new player. But that power would still be known as the original owner's rather than that new player's.
And what I personally want for Ashes is to have the same interaction, but on a much longer timescale. If Intrepid are successful with their content release pace, I'd imagine we'll keep getting at least one new Unique every 6-12 months. I'd love to see a lore-connected "event", where old Uniques get repossessed every year. If the owner has stopped playing - it'd be just a "lost legendary" that was found by the boss' minions, so you can farm it again (but it now has the owners name on it or smth).
And if the owner is still playing then their node gets attacked with everstronger ways of mobs until they manage to kill the owner, at which point the item would drop. There could may even be some BH quest that marks him as Red on the map, in case the owner decides to hide from the mobs.
In other words, I want the timescale of these items to be way longer than a few weeks, because I've played with several-week scales and I disliked it
