They definitely need the swords on these, along with maybe a two tone effect.
Yeah I already brought that up in the suggestions thread regarding the shields. Please feel free to go there and reiterate. Perhaps if many of us push for it they will figure out how to implement it. It would definitely make them much cooler to use.
As with all fads this will probably fade out so don't start passing around the cheese and crackers to go along with all of this w(h)ine... I might choose to keep this shield throughout the summer but it really depends on what the future choices of armatars will be available for my next step up. How about this as a suggestion for decorating the shields, it's plain until you achieve knight and then instead of having the symbol of a knight under your number of posts it's on the shield instead? So of course as you advance through the ranks, your shield advances too. It would be like a coat of arms which I think sounds very cool if I do say so myself.