The “identity” is a buzzword. I wouldn’t take that at face value.
To be fair, that happened long ago before Covenants a thing.
Why is this such a bad thing for lower skilled players to accept the advice of higher skilled players that is optional? 
You and Ralph, are the only ones i see that are against this. I may be missing more, but it just seems weird to be oddly against all of it.
Simply looking at the guides or advice and following it isn’t bad. Heck, i would argue you don’t have to follow it 100%, you can follow it halfway or so, or even understand from it and use it in your own builds and such.
I do agree that following it to a point where you become the kind that yells other people for not following it is bad, and so is forcing it on other people, even if they don’t want/need it.
I don’t personally care about being the best in best cause i’m not raiding or anything. But a little bit of reading and looking up on guides and listening to advice of others goes a long way.
Failure isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you can learn from it. If the build you copied from the website doesn’t work for you, then you know it doesn’t work for you and you can go and try something else.
I enjoy multiple classes. And some people like that. And some people do like seeing numbers on a screen, myself included, even from just playing the game casually.
And look, i appericate the gesture of wanting it to be an “identity” thing, but…
A. Identity wise, i function no more or less then a rogue on my level and even taking skill out of the equation, i’m just a rogue. I’m hardly unique from Stabzilla down the street.
B. This is an MMORPG. Where having the bigger numbers is the key to more easily win RPG’s (as well skill and thought), and where group play is heavily emphasized.
C. Yea, RPG’s are a journey, but i still need to output bigger numbers in order to survive against encounters and such.
And RPG’s are a number game, regardless how you look at it.
I mean, if i don’t have frost damage and fire resistance, you think i’m going to do good at all against a fire elemental that makes my physical attacks hit like wet noodles?
And sure, Retail doesn’t have any of that, but it still retains that to a degree. You can be crappy geared from the start and still do fine, at least in world content. But if you want to survive longer, kill quicker and get into harder content, you need to have bigger numbers.
Then don’t look at them.
Can i ask why you want people or want to see people to just play 1 or 2 toons? I mean, do you not think they do not enjoy playing multiple classes or trying to min-max or do Fotm stuff? 
It just gets boring for me to stick with just 1 or 2 classes if i’m on it for a long time.
I feel it’s much better to let players do whatever they want to.
- If they want to follow a guide, that’s their choice.
- If they want to create their own build, that’s their choice.
- If they want to look at numbers, that’s their choice.
- If they want to play the game (by whatever you mean), that’s their choice.
- if they want to make 4 characters for each covenant, that’s their choice.
Keyword here being choice.