There are many other ways to handle these things, all with their own downside... You could bring back more DM granted gear level based, which would allow epic players in events to occasionally earn an epic item. Of course then you have the inevitable cries of favoritism and folks who's play time does not sync up with events. You could also make all the chests and RIG generation the same, regardless of area, but then as you mentioned it favors loot grinding across the server.
The route we are currently working toward is to create epic shops with a moderate to conservative approach. Initial stores will offer lesser used items mostly, but with low to medium epic items... End game stuff for most at a cost that, while still high for RP'ers that rarely loot grind is certainly lower than what currently would get charged by a player finding a rare item. There will hopefully be the first epic store in game sometime soon (but no ETA yet) and then we will try to work on additional stores once the results of the first store have had time to show themselves.
EDIT: Whoops...appears it's already in, (YEAH! Does happy dance!) Unfortunately with work lately I've only been in game once or twice in the past week for a total of about 4 hrs.
