You are right and here is kicker why is Blizzard going against the grain? WoW playerbase is full of action junkie gamers who dont give crap about RPG elements if it affects player power.
Blizzard made all the changes over the years to suit this type gameplay / players who want short game play loops , easy gearing , FOTM rerolling , accessibility, plethora of alts available, leaderboards, optimal builds , min maxing etc etc etc and now you want to say its the communities fault
You cant put genie back in the bottle, the people who would have enjoyed a system like covenants in its current form are a minority, the rest left ages ago.
You aren’t alone. Most people do NOT want this game to be an RPG any more.
I don’t blame them I suppose.
But I just think its ironic given Classic and the state of it.
That game was made as an RPG first and foremost, and you see what needless min/maxing has done to it.
Either way, just be aware you ARE playing an RPG and not everyone dislikes that.
it doesn’t matter what the content requires. People play the game with optimizations in mind because that’s how they enjoy it. Someone put it well the other day, not everybody wants to play the game as if they’re some amoeba who achieves stimuli by just mashing their buttons mindlessly.
Nobody is asking you who you want to raid with when they voice their own opinions on the system. People aren’t trying to force people that wouldn’t want to swap covenants to join their guilds full of people who do want to swap covenants. You are making up a problem and blaming the community for it. It’s pathetic.
You spout off stuff like this
as if you know how people should play their game better than the people playing their game. But what you don’t understand is that people don’t think they NEED to fully optimize their characters, they just want to and enjoy their time being spent with people who think similarly. Those same people are not then going onto these forums and demanding people who don’t want to do so. What we DO see, though, is people that DON’T act as though they’re entitled to play with people who DO and the people that DO have to be the ones to change how they play.
Do mount farmers NEED all their mounts? No.
Do transmog farmers NEED all the item sets? No.
how is that ANY different? You’re just picking and choosing what it’s okay for people to focus on and then damning the ones that don’t pick and choose what YOU think is acceptable.
Vanilla WoW was basically made by the original Method of EQ. The idea that Covenants are somehow “returning” to RPG roots that the game never had is ludicrous.
Honestly, you could replace Jeff Kaplans famous EQ rant with stuff about Shadowlands and it’d still work perfectly.
TBH I’d rather have covenants be like talents because I like trying to find the best possible build to tackle every encounter so free swapping would be the best for me, but I can see why some people would like the permanent choice. It would be way more simple for casuals that’s for sure
This is ultimately why I have relented trying to convince anyone they shouldn’t change it.
As much as I love the idea, it will never be balanced.
I loved Corruption just as much and people constantly railed at me day in and day out for using builds and ideas I enjoyed until I felt forced to switch to what I want just to get people to stop talking about it.
The same thing will happen here.
I’ll pick the covenant I want, and people will make remarks about my poor choice for the rest of the expansion.
It will never matter mathematically.
The game will never care directly.
But because some sim some one made 6 months earlier says so, no one will ever stop to think about the niches and usages presented.
No point even bothering.
Best they just pivot now and make the new system as good as it can be.
I worry that is impossible though without delaying the expansion.
Because the mount farmers aren’t going into every discord trying to fish for likes so they force Blizzard’s hand.
Factually, you do not need to min/max to the degree people think they do to complete this game.
They may LIKE to do it, but I would hope that they like to do it because they enjoy playing the game first and foremost.
RPG is the heart of wow. If you change such a core aspect, then you could hardly call it wow anymore. I don’t even know what you are suggesting when you say “make wow not an RPG?” Like what does that even mean? Are we supposed to have no classes or differentiation at all? No core class fantasy to identify with?
Is it? What else would it be?
Just an objectively poor decision or something?
Its pretty obvious to me they are trying to add more RPG elements to the game.
If you disagree, that’s fine but I’ll have trouble understanding what else it might be.
