Shattered Kingdoms

I remember back in the day their were symbols that were not priest or shaman created, which brings me to my point.
Sometimes I find it difficult to reobtain a religion symbol when there is a drought of priest or just bad timing. I know that symbols are a treat to us non-clergy classes but how about a way to obtain one without a priest. Perhaps a quest that can be done every now and again.

Secondly, what about having tribunals having symbols of some sort. Like a police badge or something that points them out as the law of a land.

Super lulz @ Finney.
But I like both of these ideas.
What if every npc in the shrines looked at you and if you don't have a symbol worn, they tell you where to find the npc to get the quest.
I'd help develop the quests for a couple gods if I was able. I'd at least try to find the appropriate npc to give the quest.

Threads where variants of this have been discussed before:

Symbols, an idea

Symbol

Create Symbol for Paladins/Hellions

Religions and Clergy

Symbol availability

Requesting symbols

Wow, sure seems like something the playerbase would love to have changed, doesn't it?

No.

You mean like every piece of eq/treasure/"phat lewt" in all the "high-end" areas that are completely worthless have enchant changes?

Nah, I'd love to spend 4 hours running those areas to get [REDACTED] that wouldn't be worth wiping my char's [REDACTED] with.

Perhaps the point is to encourage more people to play priests.
On the other hand, I think in general the goal right now (playerwise) is to have more players.
Much like we seem to have a kingdom potentially shutting down, and the newbie area consolidated,
I'd much rather consider other non-priest ways to obtain symbols over closing religions down to accommodate the smaller player base.

Zero religions will be shut down.

I figured as much, but the religion:number of active player ratio is a bit high right now.
Thus why I said, looking for other non-priestly ways to obtain symbols may be a thing to consider, despite Dulrik's initial/recurring resolution.
Do players/character's crave them for their power? Or just a sense of identity/RP point?
Do symbols really have much 'power' anymore? Much has been limited. There are still minor perks...
Are the perks of a symbol a game balancer/imbalancer if symbols were more available?
Why does Dulrik still want symbols limited?

These questions are somewhat rhetorical but at the same time, their answer should supply Dulrik with why this is (especially now) is such a concern:
How many priests are presently active (40+ hours a month folks) in the player base?
How many faiths do these priests actually represent? (some faiths may have multiple active priests)
What is the ratio of active priests to active non-priests in the character base?

Priests get perks with their religion spell. Is this enough to entice someone to play a priest?
What percentage of the player base should be active priests?
How many characters would this represent, given the number of people in the active player base?
Does the game actively have the player base to support a single active priest in each religion?
Is that active priest high follower flagged?

How does this get improved, because it is only by fixing this, that Dulrik's dream of limiting symbol's creations to high follower priests actually functions.

I don't have a lot of answers. Just a lot of questions. Typical.