I am of the opinion everyone in game should be able to obtain everything with a reasonable amount of effort. I've always thought that way, and this is no different. The effort required for this quest was very unreasonable. However, I see the other side of this too. I know many people would be right ticked off if they spent three + days straight on the computer and then everything was sold for 500 credits or so (magic aside) right away. I'd be more than a little annoyed myself if this Friday rolled around and everything was for sale; that'd be 2 days of my life I will never get back that I could have not spent in VMK from dusk til dawn. I could care less about the stuff being rare; I just don't want to feel like I wasted my time for nothing. Those who didn't quite make it would have essentially wasted all that time too. To me, time is more precious than any prize.
The best compromise I can think of is make all the prizes available to everyone in some way or another (be it DMR codes, later easier quest prizes, for sale, Host prize, etc.), and then create a new pin for those who did complete the quest, so everyone who did would have their own badge of determination, luck, and teamwork that it took most of us to achieve it. Nothing too exciting, just have it say something like "VMK's Biggest Quest Winner." That way everyone gets all the goodies and (ideally) those who did win the items in the quest would still have something to show for their victory. Just a thought.