Hey,
As most of you are aware, on the official server, enchantments have been banned from all weapons and armour, so now the only use for XP orbs is renaming weapons and items to things like "Rolling Pin" or "John Cena". So, what about a new purpose for experience orbs, that will allow you to expand on how you play the game, without stepping too far away from cannon?
Here comes my idea: Armour and weapon upgrade stations like those that can be found in The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. At these stations, you can upgrade your weapons and armour using experience levels.
For weapons, the way that this would work would be that you would take your weapon and the main material used to make it (An iron ingot for and iron sword, for example) to the station and open up the GUI. You would then drag the weapon into the box in the gui, along with the material and then you can upgrade it. Each new upgrade would cost 8 levels more than the previous upgrade and would add 0.5 attack damage and 100 durability it each time. This would mean that if you wanted to make an iron sword equivalent in damage to a mithril sword, it would cost you 3 iron ingots and 48 levels, so it wouldn't break the game (and it would still only have 551 durability, compared to 2401).
Likewise with armour, the process would be pretty much the same, only with a more expensive recipe for the upgrade table only you would need 2 of the base material and 10xp/upgrade level. Each time you upgraded a piece of armour, it would increase resistance by half an icon and durability by 100.
Please take time to consider my idea.