Just jotting down here another one of my idle thoughts for everyone to chew on.
One of the problems, although I'm not sure how large a problem it is compared to the other problems here, is that we seem to have an ever growing surplus of equipment circulating the game.
Now, I'm guessing admins siphon off clearly unwanted, unused equipment at some point. But why don't we have a system in place where all equipment degrades with use? This would equate to the durability and maintenance system that some other games have.
Equipment in theory should slowly degrade over time, then eventually it will become unusable, whether it was actually used or not. This could be to rusting or similar causes and so the equipment is effectively taken out of the game. Thus, maintenance is required, much like you need to heal up after every fight.
When you use equipment in a fight, they will degrade or become damaged even faster and become less effective (lower damage, less accuracy or less protective). After a few thousand fights your average katana would be pretty notched however well it was made. Sometimes the blade may just snap and be completely useless after and so you lose your what could have been very expensive equipment.
Funnily enough. Now that I've typed this out, I've just realised why such a system cannot be implemented here. Anyone want to guess why? Apart from the obvious protests I can imagine coming from those owning probably expensive to maintain 5x10,000,000+50,000 bows and such.
