Part 2

As for the Relic thing. it all depends on what you see the purpose as. It seems clear that SE sees the Relics as serving these two purposes.

1. Give non-raiders a way to get psuedo raid quality weapon by replacing raid with time sink. To minimize the time sink, and to give them unique traits would then create an already bigger debate as to the balance between them and raid weapons.

2. The second purpose is, because of how one optains them, high level characters have to go into old/ lower level zones. A perennial problem in MMORPGs is the "old world" and/or lower level zones feeling like ghost towns to new players and the Relic weapons help alleviate that.

So in the context of SE's purpose for the gear the current set up makes perfect sense.