Sounds interesting. This has me thinking of Lord of the Rings Online. That game has Legendary Items that have their own XP, lvl, and item points that would be spent on upgrading key abilities and/or stats. I liked how that even if your current legendary item wasn't the best in game, you could still level it up and spend points to make it really good. I remember keeping one of my items I worked hard on all the way into end game of the following expansion.

Now that I think of it, Like ARR when LotRO came out there was virtually no class customization, then came the first xpac, Mines of Moria, and Legendary items fixed all of that. Gives me hope for ARR's future.