Considering amount of players who are unhappy with empowerment,
I dare to admit that something is broken. 100 flies can't be wrong.

Let us look what happens under the current empowerment system:

Logging on, praying, and then logging out in 5 minutes or
less is not the way to get empowered.

That's first bad thing that was introduced by empowerment. Stop for a moment and think, why the player in the question does this "bad stuff". There is no need to construct sophisticated theories how bad or good this player is. The answer is straightforward.
He wants to get empowered ( he doesn't enjoy playing with an unempowered char ) so he tries to catch his god online. Very likely he has failed to do that while logged in his regular session, so he tries unusual times, etc.


Contrary to the belief of some, the imms are not sitting there
ready to pounce on any prayer sent up at any moment. Imms,
even when online, are often afk, working on a project that
demmands a lot of attention, or even involved in an
immteraction with someone else and can't pull away that
second.

And that is another reason to let empowerment dust away.

I advise sticking around, exploring, socializing (even through
tells while sitting in the shrine if you wish), if you don't
get an immediate response. 10-15 minutes *minimum*. Anything
less, and you're just shooting yourself in the foot.

And I advise to let people decide themselves if "sticking around, exploring,, socializing" is fun for them or not. And if it is not, I advise to investigate what caused the situation where they are "forced" to do something they do not enjoy.


Have fun!

We want! But.... empowerment don't let us...


================================================

Now let us add something constructive. Remove empowerment from the game or make it automatic.
For example add a small quest in the shrine, so a new player would have to answer a few basic questions on religion and do some basic rituals to get things done. ( Example: sect quardians in Empire )

The main purpose of empowerement is to block dumb chars from playing priests. But it can be done later. The same approach works well enough with Empire, you let everybody in and then kick out unworthy people. Immortals can watch their followers and if they do something bad, just punish them. If immortal's playing time and a player's time do not overlap ( and often it is because the immortal is unavailable ), that should not be the player's fault ( eq: not getting empowered ), consider this player just being lucky because he can get away with shady things :{, as, after all , on the other side he may suffer from a lack of immteraction.

Remember: Have fun!