I suggest that players be able to submit their own icons for use in-game. Now I know that this has been suggested before, ages ago, but this really needs to come back in to discussion.
There should be limits to this. Like maybe only those who either A) Already have one for whatever reason, or B) Posted at least # times on the forums can upload one. Or for the lazy people they could also buy their custom icon for # of GS. This would help pay for the server room laken up by the extra load of teeny tiny avatars and make it where there isn’t too big of a flood of icons being submitted. A separate server for icons would make it faster for people to submit them and update them, but it would also run the risk of having avatars that break rules and such. Though this would be easily solved by having a community content moderator that was dedicated to sorting through them to get rid of no-no avatars. Or at least sorting through the new ones as they roll in.
I’m not 100% sure about the details or background mechanics of this, but it seems doable. Especially seeing as many many many players already have unique icons for whatever reasons.