@Babyhack
It's good to see something like this being created as part of a more official server.
I'm currently using a vb script as part of my personal Heroes server, that encompasses all the items for all the mobs for all the classes (4 for Heroes). Now, I do have a slight advantage, in so much as my db currently has over 3000 items (and counting), legitimately working and stat'd ones according to level, class etc. (have gotten around the Sin class by making all of their items cc required).
Basis being, there are 5 classes in effect. The 4 classes and 1 that is an item for all classes, mostly not dc/mc/sc/cc based, and as the Stock column in the db doesn't do anything, I've used it as a kind of rarity value.
40 for an item for all classes that can drop from any mob
30 for the rarer of the above and standard items class specific
20 for the rarer class specific and their set items (I currently have over 50 sets, for 5 "classes")
10 for the slightly special things
1 for items that are very special (tele ring etc)
Each mob is in a table. They'll have either Reguler/Harvest/Special labelled against them, along with minLevel and maxLevel. Levels of the players I'd expect to hunt these mobs.
The script runs through the mob part of the db, takes the min/max level and includes all items within the current 3000 strong item db that are usable for these levels, and uses the Stock value (excluding 0 for an item that I don't want dropped as it's not finished or never would drop, and the 1 items that are very special - we don't want tele rings dropping from yetis, even if they're 1/100000 ratio'd) along with the item's difference in level to the minLevel, multiplied by a standard dropfactor (dF) to produce the 1/x ratio.
(I've also added a way to change it up for different STDModes, so you can made Stones and Bujuk especially rarer than say a Weapon)
At this point, I now have Regular mobs that I can click a button and all their drop files are created automagically. They're applicable to the level of player I'd expect to be hunting them. Harvest mobs, where I pick from a list what these will give and likewise Special mobs for bosses and so forth. Every item available can then be dropped by a mob attuned to that level of hunting. If you're lvl 30 in a lvl20 area - well, that's kinda your fault for being a nooble, move on.
Works out really well, and having more than the standard several hundred items, I be damned if I was going to text edit every freakin file.