I generally do not like game mechanics that can only be experienced by 0.0001% of the population.

It's not a mechanic, it's an item. There is a big difference

The interesting thing would be the way in which the bearers of these unique artifacts would become enormously high-profile targets for everyone. Players on opposing factions would form raids to take out the player. Perhaps a dynamic might even be added that would allow the allies of an artifact-bearer to turn on their 'friend' and kill them for it. Of course, a failsafe would be necessary, that if the bearer is inactive or doesn't die for a certain period of time, perhaps the artifact will disappear and return to its default spawn or questchain.

It could add what I think would be a tremendously exciting and unique feature to what looks to be an otherwise relatively bland MMO.

That would lots of fun. Having the items reset every few weeks would be fair. The daedric prince could recall their artifact or something

I don't have a problem with the idea of artifacts in the game. I don't like the mechanic of only allowing one on a server.

I think all the artifacts should be present in each server but only one of each can exist at any given time. They should give HUGE advantages to the bearer making fighting someone who is using one a chore that should either require much more skill, stats or people to take them down.

Like Umbra doing three times the base damage of any other weapon in the game plus insta killing anything half your level or below. Eleidons Ward making the recipient take 1/3 of normal damage. Goldbrand dealing high amounts of fire damage that burns over time and limits ealing items to 50% effectiveness. The Bow of Shadows makes each hit do random unresistable debilitating effects. The Saviors Hide making you immune to all effects except base damage and half damage from magic attacks. Stuff like that.

They should basically be items that temporarily make you an almost godly powerful character. You can only keep them for a week or until you die. If you die it becomes lootable off your corpse. The person who did the most damage to you if you die in PVP will have a 2 minute dibs window to loot the artifact off your body. If you die from non PVP related things your corpse is just lootable and a beacon of sorts draws others to the weapon. If you are logged for more than a week the item disappears and is randomly found as a reward for some difficult dungeon. If you have obtained an artifact you cannot get that same artifact for at least one week or more. The artifacts should be found randomly. Non-essential NPCs could even wield them as powerful random bosses stalking the land.

That would be a fun mechanic so long as there are a decent amount of Artifacts.

yah seeing people running around duel wielding umbra would be bad XD

A think a week is a little short, honestly. I'd like to see raids formed to take down single player characters. I think that would be a really unique feature that could actually make this game stand out.

maybe 3 weeks then? reset with the pay cycle

I agree with there only being one of the item per server, but I don't like the idea of it making you godly, or being taken away. Make each one an absolute pain in the ass to get, through more than just health bars and DPS. Throw in some puzzles, maybe a little platformin (depending on how tight the controls are) and let whoever gets it, keep it. Make them all have marginally better stats than the best craftable equal, and add unique and interesting enchantments (and mixes thereof).

You could either keep it, or sell it for a [censored] amount of gold.

Just me.

EDIT: Though, add in a failsafe that if the character that owns it hasn't been played for X amount of days (weeks / months), and met X critera in those hours (nothing too extreme; traveled to so many zones, killed so many people in PvP, etc), then the item resets. It should be more than just logging in, because someone could just jump on for a minute, then go play an alt, and never even use the bloody thing. At the same time, it shouldn't force you to spend stupid amounts of time just to keep an item you worked for.

How about you need a weekly amount of PVP kills to keep it? That means if you hide from your factions enemies then you'll lose it! That would give other players the chance to kill you and steal for themselves.

the lore says that deadric weapons never stay with one user for too long, often it leaves at the worst of times, so i say only one of each artifact for each server with a regular cycle of it choosing a new master/resting place (while also have it lootable from it's dead master)

Everyone knows that Umbra is a 2-handed sword.

In many MMOs certain classes can gain a perk to dual-wield two-handed weapons. Never say never.

Oblivion says otherwise...