Sorry - I think I was a bit confusing there.
One of the benefits to the epic weapons is that they contain multiple aug slots so that you can add multiple firestrike/icestrike/anger augs to them. With your change, you would be forced to rely on the aug slots available on normal-in-the-wild weapons.
It is possible to add a new EpicAug slot to all the weapons to guarantee your epic aug will always fit on them... but... what about the additional firestrike/icestrike/anger aug slots that the players use like crazy? Could add ____ aug slots to all weapons, but then that negates a major draw of the epic 4.0 (another aug slot).
The other problem would be in weapon delay... it would be a fight to see who can get the weapon with the least delay. As opposed to everyone looking like they are holding warrior epic 1.0's they would be holding a mossy twig
Not trying to shoot the idea down, just trying to understand how one would work around the limitations it would provide.
This +1. Creates much more workload involved and wouldn't reliably work without a complete and total revamp of all possible weapon drops available.
Adding the option to put a weapon mold (these "molds" could be any set of 5 or 6 graphics that are currently supported by the titanium client) is much less work, easier to work with for players, and keeps the epic weapons as they are in their current state minus the option to change the graphic with a simple magic box combine with the desired "mold". Honestly, I can't imagine a simpler process than that. The only issue is it's a serious drain on Hunter's time for tedious work. He needs another coder for the boring work. =P
To give more specifics to my thoughts:
If you create 5 "molds" for each epic, that's 5*(16 classes*3 epics [3.0, 3.5, and 4.0]) = 240 possible combinations (or 240 individual "copies" of each epic from 3.0 and above that has to be created in the database).
Each class epic could have 5 possible "molds" that correspond well with the weapon type. For example: Warrior epic 3.0 could have 5 molds with 1HS graphics that look appealing as a warrior type weapon. Cleric would have 5 molds with shield graphics. Rogue would have 1HP graphics, and so on.
To ease the work on this, you could limit to 5 molds that are universal for each class so you wouldn't need 5 seperate molds for 3.0, 5 more for 3.5, and 5 more for 4.0. Just 5 usable molds per class corresponding to the epic weapon type.
Would be even easier if players submitted their top choices for weapon graphics for their class epics so Hunter wouldn't have to go digging around for 90 different weapon graphics on his own.
Honestly, I'm biased towards my own opinions, but I really think this to be a very workable solution and give more variety towards weapon graphics. But then again, that's all just opinion. =)