First place prize should be soulbound or account bound cosmetic skins. As you get lower in the ranks, the quality of the skins should decrease. At the same time, stat based awards should get higher (i.e. more mats for ascended gear at the bottom ranks).
This solves many problems. First, the really passionate players in servers like Blackgate (who have already finished their gear progression) are rewarded for their outstanding effort with exclusive skins. Those from lower ranked servers are able to increase their strength through gearing up with the ascended gear for next season.
This also discourages people from bandwagoning servers such as Blackgate in the future, since these players are probably relatively unskilled or undergeared and would prefer the gear to the skins. These players will instead return to their home servers before the next season starts, resulting in a much more balanced season 2 (in terms of numbers).
