Let's be creative and offer better solutions.
#1. Earn "exp" for participating in a boss fight. For each individual boss. When the bar is full, you get a random item roll. That way I know I am guaranteed a drop every 8 or so boss fights. So I can fill up all the boss's bar. Visually, this would look appealing imo. Kinda like the 'skills you've unlocked window' but with the old school classic UO health bars for each boss.
#2. A quest that asks for 15 limbs of a monster. Turn them in and choose a reward. Scatter the limbs on the corpse. If people don't loot them and the corpse goes public great. At least the newbies get a chance at eventually getting a reward too. Or make it so you have to use a skinning knife on the corpse. With everyone able to do it once per boss corpse.
That's pretty much my only ideas. That way, even if I get nothing, NOT EVEN A MESSAGE THE DEVS COULD EASILY PROVIDE "Luck wasn't with you today." or whatever. I at least can see the bar fill up, or the stack of limbs in my house go up, knowing eventually, if I keep participating, I will get a reward. Instead of boss, after boss, after boss, of NOTHING.
Edit:
#3. What about something like a power hour type system. If you kill 1 boss a day you are guaranteed a drop. Then on your second boss kill 50%. 25%. 12%. 6%. 3%. Etc. So I can just do a boss or 2 a day and be done. That way the drops won't flood the market or whatever, but players will still be happy, and not have to waste hours farming for a stupid book so they can enjoy their class they can't change.
#4. A Town Crier's call for help. If a town crier shouts out for help killing a boss, rather then general chat shouting it out, and you accept its quest, the drop rates are increased 300%. Or you are gaurenteed a roll in the loot pool. Randomize things so people don't just shout out the town crier, obviously. Either direct people to different bosses, or put each town crier on a 5 minute cooldown timer, or whatever. So you can walk around the towns waiting for a town crier to shout out about the specific boss you want? Or is that just another "grind"? Limit this town crier to 1 per char per day. "Oh, you've already helped the town today. Go to the bar, relax, come back when you are rested."
#5. Turn in items for a special boss summoner/totem. If this item is placed in the boss lair and is protected during the entire fight, the person who placed it gets a loot pool roll. This item can cost 10,000 gold, or require farming monsters out in the world and turning them in. So instead of farming boss after boss after boss I can go kill the little creatures around the world for a while and then know that effort gets me an item roll chance.
#6. UOStore. I can log into a webpage and purchase a boss drop for real life money.
#7. After the boss is defeated, there is an AoE in the zone that allows crafters to dig for left over drops. They have an hour to dig. Digging can randomly cause a monster to spawn but crafters wouldn't like this. If/when someone finds an artifact chest, it takes 3-5 crafters to "dig it up" and they need protection from others like a treasure map? An artifact won't be found every time. Before the artifact is discovered, regular digging can dig up random armor, gems to sell, and special coins, which can be turned in for the reward drops. After digging up the artifact it either goes to the lucky crafter who hit it first (Getting the lucky 000.1% spawn trigger) or it can go up for auction in the local market. With 5% of the sale going to the crafters who dug it up. Inside is a rare boss drop. This would be like a blind bag. Which might be illegal I don't know. But it'd be a huge gold sink for the game. So that's a plus.
