I really like this idea and would take it one step further. I am a huge stat nerd so the more data I can get my hands on the better. Tracking kills, previous owners, when it was looted/found, anything would be awesome in my books. Sure it's probably not worth the overhead but man I would love it nonetheless.
Interesting idea. I think it would be cool to see what you pickup has done or been involved with. I know it would be a DB sort of resource pull but I think it would be cool if you picked up a sword called Orc's Bane and it told you why.
Pretty cool. I would like to hear some Dev input on this sort of thing.
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I wish I'd opened this thread sooner. I really didnt think it would be all that interesting, but I really like this concept. I wonder if you could even gain some kind of additional benefit for using a weapon with a significant history, even if it were as simple as a faction adjustment sort of thing.
There have been some discussions in the past here about mudflation, and how saturated the world can become with a particular item. I think the devs have mentioned that they would like a means for items to be removed from the gameworld in order to curb this. Maybe I'm miss-remembering. But anyway, you could couple this idea with house trophy items too. Where even if the item were a relatively mundane one, if it keeps the history of having been used in memorable fights you would have an incentive to convert it to a trophy. You wouldnt ordinarily make a trophy out of a bronze axe, but if that axe happened to have been used to kill Lockjaw on your first character in your first weeks of the game, and you can see a history of that event somehow from the weapon itself, it might be enough of a memorable moment that you want to immortalize it.
It might be really cool to look over you old gear dsiplayed in your home and take a stroll down memory lane.
I was loving the idea until I read Feyshtey's post lol.
When I got to the part about a bronze axe I realized that you'd have people swapping weapons last second just to get a history on them thus ruining the fun IMO, especially if there's a limited number of weapons that can be tagged. Rusty Dagger of Endgame Boss Killing... you know you'd see them. Additional benefits sound good to me though. Faction could definitely be useful and not overpowering. Maybe the faction boost could stack a few times for multiple kills with that weapon on the boss. Bane damage is also a viable option I'd say. I remember in Luclin you had to have bane weapons to (melee) damage Lord Inquisitor Seru which was kinda annoying but interesting at the same time. Getting kill credit on raid bosses in a zone which then gives you +bane on that weapon which is required/recommended for the zone's final boss (helps on other bosses in zone too but not needed) is also a reward and shows status/kill count. If it only makes the additional weapon power useful in the one zone it's easier to figure out how powerful bonuses should be as well. There would also be a lot less to consider if they need to modify a zone bonus compared to say a game-wide +orc bonus that might take multiple changes and lots of time time to balance it properly.
Getting credit would probably need to be based off of being there for the kill and not getting the killing blow. Sure a wizard could get a killing blow, but a healer is very unlikely to have the possibility. What if a pet lands the last hit? It also adds and additional penalty to death if the killing blow is required. A death might not be your fault, but you'd lose the chance of getting the weapon benefit if you can't get rezzed before the fight ends.