The way you describe it, makes covenants sound pretty unimportant, if their importance are so little, so meaningless. Then why does it matter so much if on this one thing, you are not able to have it all.
People tend to forget how young the game industry actually is when it comes to hitting the mainstream.
There really isn’t a formal educational bar set for “game director”.
Because the “lore” of covenants is not important to everyone. Forcing its importance on everyone won’t work. We are constantly told how it’s to force MEANINGFUL CHOICE on everyone, but that choice in regards to the story/lore/“RPG” doesn’t really matter to everyone which is why the focus for so many is on how the abilities will impact their gameplay.
As I’ve said before, the abilities and permanence are the issue.
There are many that are like me that do not care at all which faction they end up in, because the decision is entirely dependent on which will be the best.
Which is also part of the meaningful choice process. It’s not all lore and story. The power that your character gains from story is also something people find enjoyable. Is this something everyone finds fun? Certainly not, however it does appeal to those who enjoy some of the deeper mechanics of a roleplaying game. It’s as if you are choosing a faith in a DnD game and are being bestowed a blessing from your god. A ability which is specific to that choice. I don’t expect you to understand it as you already said you don’t care about such things. Although judging by what Ion said this sort of seems like a type of feel they are trying to bring to the game. Along with the returning feeling of choices being harder to undo. You seem alright, so I’m sorry this is affecting you in a negative way. However This is a system I really look forward to.
Or in another perspective. Did Arthas just magically become a Death Knight? Or was there a series of choices he made, which granted him Death Knight abilities along the way. A slow transition. This is what people want for their own characters.
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forcing it is what we should do. It is the other way around.
The gameplay should force players to make choices, and people who discard it. They are not playing the game how it wants to be played. It is that simple. Game design change, expansions change, and you adjust or get left behind.
We do. All the time. It isn’t necessary for us to get game-breaking abilities by committing to a covenant to be considered a choice.
Why not bring back proper professions and have the choice in profession you make be more impactful?
Why not bring back proper glyphs to make those impact your character?
These borrowed power systems are lame, and when they are designed to take more power out of your classes hands to create this artificial “leveled playing field” that won’t actually exist, it’s just not going to work. Might sound good to some, but the practicality of it is not going to be what they want it to be.
and you adjust or get left behind.
The only people that are going to be left behind are the people who cannot play their classes well enough to accommodate for their covenant choice not being adequate enough for x content. There will be gatekeeping done on covenants already which is on top of the spec/build/class gatekeeping that will already exist, and if they do get an invite and cannot out perform their suboptimal covenant choice… they’re double screwed.
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This I can agree with you on, and it’s the one thing I hate about this covenant system. I would rather they introduce something exactly like it, but have it stick with us.
Someone never played Vanilla
Whispers RL 500DKP on bracers
"Sorry bro reserved for pally
Hazel has always been pretty awesome 
She doesn’t really “editorialize” or go for sensationalism.
I’m lucky, I guess. I mostly solo so I’ll just go for whatever covenant is best for mostly soloing and stuff I want to do (like tower probably, etc.)
A person who raids, but wants to maybe do other stuff, has it the hardest. Covenants WILL be a “we need you to have this covenant…” thing. This is one of the reasons I quit doing the raid thing after Vanilla, which really soured me on it. I PAY for my sub, no one else does; So I play the way I WANT to play.
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Yeah, just discovered them recently. Those are the things I hate about streamers and youtubers. It’s usually just a ton of biased reporting. It’s extremely frustrating trying to find information without a massively bias perspective. At least I found a go-to for WoW now. Fair and Accurate reporting.
Ion wasn’t even close to being right. All he did was parrot blizzards vision of “This is our goal in theory” that never ends up working in reality and hasn’t for several expansions.
The points Preach was making and the questions he was asking were well thought out and solid but because he draws back to his experience as a high end raider for some reason GD loses their collective minds anytime the raiding community is brought up.
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I salute your courage, fellow hunter. Not many people would get on to this forum and say something positive about Mr Hazzikostas.
From the start Ion set out their philosophy of covenants in clear, simple terms - describing how when you start to play and create a new character, you have to make choices. Some are unchangeable, and some can change from moment to moment. You choose your character by first selecting the class, the most immutable choice you make, all the way through to the day-to-day situational choices of what spell to cast, what food to eat and so on. And that their core idea with Covenants was that they were closer to the immutable side of a character choice rather than the other side. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, no more than there is anything wrong with you choosing to play a hunter or a mage or whatever.
What many of the people on these forums seem to want is that Covenants not be that semi-unchangeable choice; they want the best of both worlds. That is, an important choice for your character, but one that can be changed almost on a whim.
My gut feeling on Ion’s answers to Preach at one point is that yes, it may be easier to make a second character if you want to play one Covenant on, say, your Death Knight tank and another on your dps Death Knight. Sometimes Ion waffles on a bit in an apparent to effort to provide as much detail in his answers as possible. Although he doesn’t come right out and say this (and I might have read his response wrong) I think that’s what he was pointing towards. If so, it may not be ideal but if it becomes an issue to change Covenants, then having a set of toons for each purpose similar to once having to have sets of gear for each activity may be the way people have to go. At least those that do high end/hardcore gaming.
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I’m impressed with the number of Preach/Ion threads that have been created since that interview, I don’t think I’ve ever muted so many threads before.
All you have to do is read the raid journal and make sure everyone else does, too. Such depth.
Stick to farming transmog.
And yet… here you are.
Welcome, get yourself a chair and a drink.
Yup. That’s why every single one of us a top 1 world raider
Ion has already stated that everyone would be able to complete all content without covenant abilities. These abilities ARE NOT needed to complete content, they are just fun perks for making a choice. That’s all it is.
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Ghostcrawler was terrible
Same.
I didn’t know how to quite put my disagreement on the matter into words until Ion came up with the Overwatch connection.
That’s when it hit me that basically Preach wanted every character that is [Insert Class] utterly identical. Characters of [Class A] and [Different Class B] can be different, but not those that are both [Insert Class].
When you’re at that high, cutting edge world first mythic progression level, I understand the desire for that.
If I wanted to play a game centered on that kind of competitive structure, I’d play a game like Overwatch or Heroes of the Storm.
I want to play an RPG though…which means not every [Insert Class] will be identical in a group. Even if the same spec. There is a history of player decision making involved that will differentiate them.
And may the Light forgive my trespass on this matter.
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