Hopefully for them they pull the ripcord before too many people leave.
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It’s already been confirmed that we WILL be able to switch regardless, the issue many people have is that the ability to switch back after experimenting with another Covenant is being heavily timegated.
Thank you for what appears to be an honest attempt to sidestep bias - as much as possible - while providing some more objective take-aways about the underpinnings of the covenants.
I like the concept - I think it’s an interesting take of having the covenants supplant faction importance. Maybe this is the devs flirting with reducing the importance of faction identity? (BFA seemed to be testing multiple systems and mechanics - e.g. warmode, each patch creating new abilities, etc - SLands may be continuing that paradigm).
I do wish there were more choices to make, and not largely a single one: pick your covenant. (More choices: pick a covenant for aesthetic, philosophical reasons; then pick a covenant ability [renamed to fit this change in mechanic], then a class ability, etc)
Covenants are feeling like a sub-class, which I do dig. My desire would be to have a little more flex on picking from a list of covenant abilities and class abilities, like I write above.
Nonetheless, I’m excited to try a new system. Just trying to weigh between the aesthetic I like, the narrative that may best fit my character’s RP, and the class and covenant ability that plays into my own class fantasy (night fae’s blessings - previously auras - for the paladin class ability are boss to me when it comes to how I think about the old school pally class, but the aesthetic and narrative doesn’t fit as nicely as Kyrian does for Fair’s backstory - as near as I can tell from here.)
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Blizz is counting on us doing just that. Like many times before. It’s beta. Things can still change. Accepting something that’s clearly going to negatively affect so many players, while offering nothing positive is just wrong. Why does there need to be something like this that has to sour the experience? Can’t we just have a good expansion for once without the BS?
Yes, to be clear, my goal wasn’t to say “suck it up, you switch-wanting nerds, lol”. I happen to also want the switching. What I was trying to offer (as Fairlight noted) was simply that the ship has sailed, based on what I saw in Beta. Asking for them to change it to “the good thing” between now and launch is likely to be ignored.
So under the notion that we’re stuck with it for 9.0 and no amount of pleading will get us past that, we should all switch gears (fast forward to acceptance). The choices are pretty simple:
- Wait to buy the expansion and play until the patch the alleviates this - Let’s be honest, most of us are too addicted
- Play the expansion to cap and see if the concerns are warranted, unsub if so
- Abandon the game - Again, addiction, but I do hope people vote with their dollars
- Rejoice (if you are Ralph and are tired of people wishing for the ability to minmax)
Something that isn’t talked about often but tangentially related is how this game divides the core PvE content even further. I say tangentially related as most people begging to minmax are squarely in the “lol, lore” and “I just tolerate questing so I can PvP/Raid” camps, but for those of us that want the expansion’s story, we can’t see it on one character anymore. It’s been this way since launch where you really needed to have one Horde and one Alliance character, but BfA really doubled down on this and you couldn’t even do half of the zones if you didn’t have an other-faction alt.
Shadowlands is splitting yet again, and you’re going to need to have 4 total characters to see all of the endgame storyline, unless you’re willing (perhaps on a 6 month cadence?) to abandon the Covenant you’ve played in for 6 months on your main and start fresh on “the next one” so you can see it all. I am an altoholic so I’m already assigning a handful of alts to covenants, but I have at least two friends that are a one-character-only type of player, and they’re basically buying 1/4th of an expansion story.
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Why do you say this? There’s benefit in having it be a choice that you have to consider and commit to, in the same way there’s a benefit to your class being a choice you can’t just swap out of. Investing in a decision isn’t an inherently bad thing. There’s pros and cons to both sides, and I really hate this whole idea that it’s strictly negative.
Where in the world are you getting 6 months from?
Edit: I think I misunderstood, after rereading it sounds like you mean switching just to experience everything in the Covenant, not that you’d be locked for 6 months. Is that right, or did you mean you’d be stuck there for that long?
So the only positive thing is that you have to make a choice? How exactly does that improve the game?
Also; if your class is the most impactful choice we can make, why exactly do we need more impacful choices? Are they assuming more is better?
Anyways, even if you somehow consider another impactful choice a positive thing, it’s still heavily outweighed by the negative things these systems bring to the game.
Yes, I was imagining a main-only type of player that had 2 years worth of expansion to see “everything”. I guess perhaps a more accurate strategy would be to wait for 9.3 when the story is wrapped up and then spend 4 months in each covenant you didn’t spend the first 12 months in.