This item was more or less an epic without being called an epic. The item started out very mundane and once you got augments for it turned out very nice and full of stats. All the purple stats you see on it were from augments. As well as enhancing some damage. Very complicated and required a lot of factioning, flagging, etc. to aqcuire.
I know it wont be popular opinion here but I felt SoE did some good for Vanguard. They kept the doors open and released some content to a population that was hoping to get a quality game and stuck through all the hard times and bugs that it was littered with from release. Vanguard never really stood a chance from release, it was released too early because of financial setbacks and had such a huge following from the beginning and then a desert waste land a few months later. So much content sat un developed, so many bugs (serious bugs) falling through world and dying, mechanical bugs, damage bugs any kind of bug you could think of VG had it. Not to mention only the top 5% of gaming products could play the game.
This is why you wont see me complain about how long Pantheon takes to release. As long as they get it right it will be amazing. Brad has such a great vision for his games, I only hope this one turns out like Vanguard should have from the get go.
Items like this are inevtiable in any mmo. There is always a point you reach that when you release enough content you have to up the ante so to speak or it becomes more of the same. One thing EQ did with the GoD expansion was they turned the tables. It went from a hit point centric game to AC centric. People had to change gear and adjust to be able to take the massive amount of damage the raid targets were hitting for. This helps alleviate some of the inflation of stats on gear if it is done right. However you can only do this so much. And very minimal additions need to be made. In EQ it was usually 25-50hp give or take per expansion. By the time they launched 15 expansions the stats were just so far out of balance that it became a nightmare to try and pick up or catch up.