Yeah that's a great idea. Let's introduce another item on the store which generates income for UO.
If I was in charge of UO, and found out they introduced an item (Shard Shields) which will reduce the cash flow of the UO I would have fired the whole damn team.
#1 Biggest Blunder/Dumbest idea ever implemented in UO.
We have a game fighting for it's survival, so let's reduce the cash flow even more....
The game fighting for it's survival... lol... UO could probably be kept afloat with like one active account per shard without any additional purchases, just to maintain without being updated.
As far as shard shields go, Yea I don't completely disagree with you, it was not the best move, although 14 years of a single active account ($1,678.32 over a 14 year period at minimum with 6-month subs/GTCs (not counting any account upgrades, boosters, or additional purchases) for an xfer a month to a single shard per available pick. It's really not that bad there are restrictions with these tokens.
Shard Shields are easily the most useful vet reward to date, I doubt they would ever come out with something quite as useful as those, but as another 14th-15th year reward I'd pick a few 1/week forged artifact tools even though I don't use them that often, or perhaps they should remove the 15 year cap on vet rewards and come up with some higher end picks... I wouldn't be opposed to that either.
There are much more important problems than shard shield vet rewards causing UO to lose money -
Free shards, Duping, Items/upgrades not being available for purchase in certain countries etc. Unfortunately, the chances are these probably won't be dealt with, but who knows.
However if it's so important: the1/week forged metal of artifacts adds an "owned by no one" tag to the item so the first person to equip it after enhancing it becomes bound too. (I know I've said this before), that would keep value to store-bought versions. I'd still pick a few of them.
