Suggestions

So much support!

Maybe have the messages come from a courier dragon on behalf of the deity? The deity accounts are all handled by site admins, and I know they don't have time to manually send out hundreds of messages each day, but FR used to have courier dragons deliver things we bought from the auction house to our inbox, so the automated code for that could probably be changed up and implemented for birthday wishes without too much hassle.

Definitely have some sort of limit on it to prevent people from changing their birthday to farm gifts - maybe set it so players can only receive a gift once per calendar year?

Have an option under account settings to toggle birthday notifications on/off. (Most people like birthday wishes, but not everyone does!)

I've run a Windy birthday list in the Wind forums for nearly 4 years now, where I do my best to send everyone who signs up a birthday message and a small gift on their special day. The responses I get are so sweet, and sometimes a little heartbreaking - I can't begin to tell you how much something so small can mean to people!

(Shameless plug - if you're in Wind, click my signature and join our flight's birthday list!)

Can't recall if I posted here or not. I only support if it's optional. There are ppl Who don't celebrate their birthday for various reason and it be a shame to make them feel bad.

And no presents are not always good.... I know some ppl Who view presents on their birthday a bad thing. .

Much rather have an annevesary present. . Like the date you joined fr :)

This could be a way to get recolor cakes onsite. You get a couple of each kind? Either way it's cute and could happen over rollover to reduce strain and... really doesn't have all that many downsides, nobody could see the messages.

That’d be so sweet! Maybe as long as it’s limited to the three categories of Easy Medium and Hard in 5 wishes (like Giving Tree) I support!

i support this since i love...love...LOVE getting gifts from friends. it'd be a lil extra something...like i wasn't just a cog in a machine...i was loved by space dad because i got a gft ;3 plus pft, even if no gifts...space dad noticed me XD

support! i'd love to get at least a happy birthday from the deities! c:

I definitely would love to get a message on my birthday! Also, I've seen various people mention some form of trinket or token, and I think that it could work really well if FR had a sort of 'birthday shop', and the token acted a little like a prismatic token, and let you pick one item from the shop every year, with new items added at the end of the year (so people can plan if they want to spend their token yet, or if they want to wait until they know the shop will be updated.) No items from this shop would retire, and the token wouldn't be tradeable of course.

The items would be unique to the shop, and would be a mix of fun, silly things; cute, small apparel (birthday hats, streamers, etc,), special birthday vistas (maybe some themed around star signs?) and maybe some random items (e.g. a cake that gives a good number of food points, a little trinket medallion) - the shop is designed just to put a smile on a player's face.

Through the birthday shop, they could offer variety to the gifts to players while also giving the players control over what they get, so that there's no disappointment if they don't get the item they wanted on their birthday.

A directory of all the birthdays would be good too - there's a fair number of players out there who enjoy gift-bombing, and I 100% could forsee an organisation forming on the forums dedicated to gift/message-bombing players on their birthday. - Perhaps though this could be a feature it's possible to opt out of (a hide birthday button so it's not made public) and maybe players could have the option of setting their birthday to be their FR anniversary instead. Of course, there'd definitely need to be a way to stop people from changing their birthday over and over to get more gifts - maybe one free change within the first week of joining, and after that you can only change it once a year for a fee.

Support! This would be a very cool feature

Support for getting a message, at least. And I wouldn't be opposed to a gift as long as it wasn't a birthday-unique item. Can you imagine the drama if people with birthdays right after the implementation of birthday gifts got unique items that others had to wait nearly a year for? And the market for them would be a disaster. I feel like a better gift would be a rusted/iron/gilded chest; something small but nice that's also a bit of a surprise.

Also, people should be able to opt out if they want, not everyone celebrates their birthdays.