Any idea how restrictive something like unique items would be? Personally I think this would definitely be the greatest prize of all... everyone already has loompoints and gold, or can easily acquire those if they want to. What we can't do every day would be to make our own weapon. Would it be possible to allow a winner of a tourney the ability to craft their own wep? I.e. they sit down with Tydeus/San/whoever and pitch them their idea... so long as it is within reason, of course. Pick a model, animation type, and stats. Item balancers would of course weigh in on their idea to see if it would be insanely game-breaking, or only slightly.
Perhaps for the more ridiculous ideas you can limit the player's useage. Treat these weapons like flaming katanas... undeniably OP, but seen about as often as Nessie. I wouldn't be mad at all if for example San was able to run around with a 120 speed liuyedao since I'm sure he would really only break it out once in a blue moon, mainly for everyone else's benefit (whoever can cut him down can wield the power of "San's God-tier Liuyedao!*"). Just imagine the possibilities some more creative people could come up with... maybe allow something like an always 1h-animation goedendag or morningstar. Maybe even let someone make a 2h animation long axe or something. Of course appropriate stat reductions would be applied in these cases, but I hope you see what I'm trying to get at.
Just my thoughts on what the ultimate c-rpg prize would be.
*Part of the customization process would be naming it, of course.
EDIT:
Perhaps, yeah. It would be significantly more difficult than a raffle, of course, it also has the potential to be a lot more interesting and fun. I'm just not sure how we could set that up though. Perhaps just have the referee use the marketplace to take bets, idk. I don't think it's worth hoping for some in game betting system, because that would require communicating with the database, and that's not really something feasible atm. It's worth thinking about.
You think that having a ref (or anyone can be put in charge, really) can get a free marketplace booth and bets can be placed that way?