As I've said countless times, Assassin's gear is not OP. It's actually carefully balanced, but no one bothers to take the time and figure out how it works.
To address your other points-
Plagued by dupers...? Maybe I'm missing something, but I really haven't seen much if any duping. Neutral kingdoms are being balanced out as time goes, on, if you keep up with the changelogs you'd see that.
As for the playercount, if a reset actually improved the active players, that might be a good thing, but from my experience, a lot of people would come back for a few weeks to a month before leaving for the same reasons they left in the first place.
Guess we'll have to see how it goes.