>
>3) Then keep playing quality mortals. They contribute all of
>that, plus provide groupmates, PK opponents, etc.
>

I've kind of tossed this around, myself. The pros and cons of insta-religion-level-imms are numerous.

One counter to Valg's comment here is that quality mortals can't empower, they can't provide a more diverse selection of religions, they can't take the form of a mob and interact with a person or group to spice up the gaming experience. (And of course, any or all of these can be used well, or abused horribly).

I can get mortal interaction, groups, PK, etc. any day I decide to log in and play. I cannot have two-way interaction with mobs to further my roleplay, participate in a random quest that doesn't exist and isn't being run, or follow a god of sphere Necromancy, or Vivimancy, or Greed (just picking some empty spheres from the webpage).

Unfortunately for the OP's idea, I think it's clear that in the current state, there is definitely a need for a tiered "work-your-way-up" Imm system, and there are significant and insurmountable cons to early-advancing religion immortals who haven't been "verified", for lack of a better word. And furthermore, how is it fair to the 7-year veteran imm that he/she gets stuck debugging item code while NewbieImm gets to go play god and have fun smiting mortals?