Shattered Kingdoms

yeah, when we had a 50-60 playerbase on average.

Promoting player interaction is a wonderful thing, however there are many religions which quite simply lack clergy and that makes it extremely difficult for some players to obtain their symbols. Which is why something should be done to rectify that, possibly something that doesn't ruin the original idea of promoting player interaction, simply expanding it so that players may interact with others and not only priests of their church in order to gain a symbol.

You already have to interact with other players for a lot of other things, brewing, skins, herbs, enchanting, rezzes, scribing, deportation, immigration, pardons, lore, etc.

Symbols are not that leet where you shouldn't have a NPC scripted somewhere that makes one for you.

Let's think about the norm for the interaction to get a symbol.

PersonWithoutSymbol: Hello, FavoredPriestOfTheFaith. May I have a symbol?
FavoredPriestOfTheFaith: Sure.
FavoredPriestOfTheFaith starts to concentrate.
wait for it...
blah blah symbol created.
FavoredPriestOfTheFaith: Here you go.
PersonNowWithSymbol: Thank you very much.

End of interaction.

Yeah, great thing to hold on to.

Give NPCs the script already.

I will almost always reward a creative or purposeful prayer in the right tone for a symbol. I don't respond to those requests made OOCly or while leveling in the Chancel, but a thoughtful request can get my attention. I am often visible when online, but not always.

I've thought about making a priest that was into the crusading path, but not really sure what race would best fit a faith such as Alshain. My current character isn't into violence and tries to stay away from such things.

I don't think one race fits a religion better than another, really. Pick what seems most fun to you. I'd tell you which races are mechanically the best for priest, but I'm guessing that you don't care about that, since you already chose the Alshain faith.

Alshain faith to me seems like the type of faith for a crusading battlepriest to be in.

what does that have to do with race, though?

I'll go ahead and state that the best race for an Alshain priest is anything white.

I will also warn you that front-row battle priests do not exist in this game. The best you can hope for is like, in Lodoss War, where that one Myrii cleric dude sang the song of war while everyone else was fighting the ancient dragon.