Guild Wars 2

Imagine this: A player spends his time gathering mats, gaining skill in his craft, until he’s finally ready. Hes at max level weaponsmithing, ready to create an awesome exotic quality sword. He puts all his mats together, feels a sense of accomplishment, and gets his sword thats identical to every other exotic crafted sword. This is how the game is right now.

Now imagine this: A player spends his time gathering mats, gaining skill in his craft, until he’s finally ready. Hes at max level weaponsmithing, ready to create an awesome exotic quality sword. He puts all his mats together, feels a sense of accomplishment, and creates his own masterpiece weapon. HE is the one forging it, so HE is the one who decides what it looks like. He wants a pommel with a small red gem in it. He wants a hilt with a black leather grip. He wants a standard crossguard. He wants a shiny, long blade that has a slight curve. He now decides he wants his crossguard to be a bit ornate. After a few minutes, he is done, his brand new sword is complete, and it is unlike any other sword made before, because HE is the one who made it.

We can customize our armor to a degree with the dye system. Why can we not customize the weapons that WE are making? Why should every sword we craft look the same? Why should we have to seek out a skin we like instead of tweaking our weapon during the creation process to our liking? Perhaps even make it so that the look of your sword (or whatever weapon you are making) is based on different crafting components: for example, you have an Orichalcum Straight Blade, or you can make an Ori Curved Blade, or a Jagged Blade, or whatever, and combine it with a hilt that looks like this or that or whatever.
The other option would be to have customizing a weapon similar to making a guild emblem. You have a bunch of options that you mix and match until you get what you like.

The basics of the idea have been laid out, I’m sure ArenaNet could take this much much farther, and I’m sure everyone would LOVE to see something like this.