See, you have a MUCH more positive attitude than I do. I'm figuring that just about the time there's at least one artifact for every man woman and child in UO.. smiths will suddenly get runic hammers with semi-decent uses. By then it will be far too late.
"Well, I can try and make you a tunic.. oh, wait, you and everyone else already have the Armor of Fortune. Um.. well.. crap."
This may be the most convoluted method I've ever seen to stop the gold faucet from flowing. We'll shut off bags of sending, tell players we WISH that scripting would stop.. and then we'll let Doom suddenly burst forth with a veritable fountain of artifacts.
Maybe they missed the back end of the faucet, the never-ending shield script.. I dunno. And yes, it now changes to the never-ending dull copper plate gloves script. Blah.
And then.. after the dust settles, and everyone has either dragged out all the arties they want, or purchased them with script gotten gold.. smiths will suddenly be able to make reasonably useful items with their runic hammers.
The timing just sucketh.. again.