Shattered Kingdoms

Heh. I don't think the religion I'm in now even HAS a priest, let alone a favored one.

The priest population of SK is trying to die, that's the problem.

It's hard to blame them, given that shamans are everything priests want to be except in the damage output department. Of course, the inherent problem is that priests have to be more RP-driven than most of the other classes, I think. So buffing them in some way isn't really going to attract the playerbase any more.

Be nice to your local priest -- they're getting more and more difficult to enjoy playing.

Please summarize why you seem to feel that priests are not as attractive now as compared to before. The class is virtually unique in not having had any weakening changes made to them in years. And most people consider the heavy RP aspect to be a positive, not a negative. And by the way, priests are still the 2nd most popular class in the game. By comparison, shamans are barely in 5th place.

Don't get me wrong, I think the class itself, from a codified standpoint, is attractive enough, combining the healing and teleportation spell classes is enough to give anybody plenty to do. And I've recently been hanging out with a better crowd, so I'm not nearly as "embittered" as I have been in the past.

If I were to summarize, the primary thing wrong with being a priest is that it is often an "all-give no-take" job. Kind of like coding. You put a goodly amount of effort into creating an RP environment for rezees (is that a word?), you patiently enchant and brew for your friends, and most of it goes totally unappreciated (or taken advantage of) unless you fish for compliments. So, like I said before, be nice to your local priest. That's why I play the class: I like being able to make a worthwhile contribution to someone else's experience. Just appreciate us.


P.S. You do good work, Big D.

Tagging on to before:
1) Thank the priest. It's funny. I oftentimes get more thanks for offering somebody a cloak from my collection post-resurrection than the actual resurrection itself.
2) Give the priest a hand, if you can. Take them on an adventure. My priest likes to get out behind a tank, and see new things.
3) Randomly catch a helpful priest on one of your better days, and offer them a spoil of war, or the like. That's only happened to me once, and all that person had to say was "Hey, I'm in the River" and I stopped whatever I was doing for a quick prayer.

Because of my timezone I usually play when the who list is made up from 5-20 people, I can assure you NONE of them is a priest, if you die and your corpse is destroyed then...

The IMM staff may not be aware of this but I am sure a lot of new players have been turned off the mud because of this.
Certainly more of the European players can confirm me on this one.

The priest is one of those classes that everyone likes to have around as long as they don't actually play him.

The playerbase has become very demanding in enchants, brewing potions etc, services that the priest can provide that are very boring and frustrating to him at times.



There have been some changes that affect priests indirectly though.

*I noticed a slow but steady decrease to dark-aura priests after the change to Bolt of Glory.
The spell may be fair to be so strong against necromancers but not really when it comes to priests. I could be wrong though.

*The change that made any laity able to become HF of religions. What priest likes having a rogue, scout or merc running their church?
Priests are not necessary in faiths anymore, that hurt the class as well.
Priests used to be the top rp class, the most prestigious one, but not anymore.

Psh, it's not your decision to rez us, it's your priviledge. Priests are the second most popular class in the game, if you don't spam out a rez and brew some pots in quick order, some other priest will.

And priests were never the top class in RP or prestige.

I don't think it's something so timezone specific. Priests are never on and when they are they're usually too busy to help. Most are now in cabals/tribunals and are so busy with raids or PK in general that they don't help anybody they don't have to. More often than not the response will be that they're busy.

Lightie priests can be miserable to play from the incredibly strict rules that can apply and the bad RP received from people just looking for a quick res. Darkie priests are too easily mutilated by paladins. Grey priests were gimped which makes them far less desirable to play. No matter the alignment they will be expected to suffer through the rushed bad RP of others and the lack of appreciation for what they do.

If people would treat priests like more than res [REDACTED] and healing machines and RP with them more I think it'd bring back some of the desire.

*coughs* Armor differences*/cough*

Aside from my "cold", Allikat again you never fail to amuze me with your constant reach to complain. Your in a faith that hands symbols out, if only you bothered to learn how. You have the ability to get a symbol at any time.