A Sensible Covenant Solution with RP

Community General Discussion
1

I know there are many threads on this topic. Here is my take on it with a focus on what Ion has said recently with regards to RP and Covenants.

RP and Covenants:
First, the devs (or at least Ion) feel strongly about the act of choosing a covenant, with all of its pro and cons, for the sake of RP. While bringing back RP into the game is needed, I think there is a better way that doesn’t affect one’s class rotation/ability experience. WoW’s endgame leaves much to be desired in way of RP. Endgame boils down to raids, mythic pluses, and PvP. Let’s be honest, professors, the opened world, and world quests/dailies have little to offer with regards to RP; they could be done much better. If the goal is to bring back RP into the game, then there are other ways to do that which do not impact player’s gameplay or pigeonholed them in how successful they will be or feel in the bread and butter of WoW’s endgame: raids, mythic pluses, and PvP.
In short, I love and hope there is more RP coming back to the game because it has been missing. But pigeonholing players from core abilities that impact how they perform with the bread and butter content of WoW’s endgame will feel bad.

Ideas to Add RP Back Into the Game:
If the devs want to add in more RP why not polish up mico-holidays, make professions meaningful (cosmetics and relevant items one could sell on the AH), add more class-specific content, add guild/player housing so that professions could make items for those guild/player housing, add more mystery into the open world (hard to find caves or open-world dungeons), add more choices with quests (maybe you help an NPC or you don’t, and maybe that choice impacts whether or not you are able to enter a small town or outpost), add more voice acting (maybe not so much an RP issues but I want it), and add more story dialogue and interactions with the main characters of WoW so the story is told crystal clear.

Possible Covenant Solution:
I love the idea of experiencing Shadowlands through the lens of a chosen covenant. However, I think intertwining core class abilities is bad.
Why not lock the covenant specific abilities but allow the player to choose the class-specific abilities, much like the essences. This would not impede the RP element at all, and it would allow players the freedom to choose the class-specific abilities depending on the endgame content.
The class-specific abilities could be made into a blessing or a boon by talking to the main leader of the covenant, for example. After all, the player will be helping and experiencing all of the covenants, why wouldn’t they lend the player their special power?

I am not writing this to be divisive. I am just throwing out what I hope is a sensible opinion and feedback. If you feel strongly that the covenant class-specific abilities should be locked behind a covenant or not easily changeable, please explain why.

2

Because it would remove all the weight from the choice because there would be no drawbacks, the fact that you lose the other abilities is what makes it a meaningful choice.

Having access to everything with no real drawbacks to gameplay makes the choice as meaningless as the current talent system where people change on the fly.

Thankfully not in m+ since watching people change talents/sets before boss or before aoe pulls would just show how badly designed the game is, this pandering to “I need to be optimal 24/7” thankfully is gone.

3

I hear yah. But, isn’t the act of choosing a talent/ability the reward and drawback in it of itself. Take the talents for example. If I go AoE, my reward is that I do well at AoE but the drawback is not doing so well at single target. One does not have access to everything at once. Rather, we have to pick and choose. Choice doesn’t make covenant meaningless; at least to me.