ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

how about having ring shops or ring jewelers have an option to "strip" a ring of its ego, but doing so comes at a cost 20 gold per level of the ring, so a copper ring would cost 20 gold, but a mithril ring 100 gold to remove the ego from the ring?

That would be very welcome. Non-magical rings are strangely rare. In fact, I would say that I find more artifact rings than non-magical rings, which is decidedly backwards. And non-magical mithril rings? They're practically nonexistent.

Out of countless games, I have found a single blank mithril ring.

beta11 increases the chance to get a non magical high level ring

In beta10b only my hobbits tended to find nonmagical rings, and typically only two before they died in intermediate dungeons... beta11b, first non-undead (noldor archer) got a nonmagical ring even before Bill came down with a terrible case of being dead.