It’s ironic. If Covenants didn’t have character power tied to them, they’d basically be Legion Class Halls, with each having a unique storyline and some minor perks (as well as cosmetics), but all being largely the same.
People would have loved them. Tons of people leveled multiple characters in Legion just to see every Order Hall. The Mage Tower offered no character power, but even years later, people are still begging for it back.
But Blizzard managed to convince themselves that unless you tie a gargantuan amount of character power to these, people won’t be interested, and the end result is a bitter taste in the mouth for the people who really liked Night Fae or Venthyr, but got stuck with Necro or Kyrian because they’re the best.
You are a minority come launch you will see it for yourself, you cant spend 10+ years streamlining a game around accessibility , ease of access , alts , short game play loops, fast combat (see gcd when that happened), game modes that encourage min max , optimal builds , (arena, Hc raiding, CM, Mythic raiding, MDI) and then release new system thats goes against all that you have done and expect players to go AWESOME.
It kinda surprises me that even in a video game how obsessed with power some people are. Quite literally willing to kill off all semblance of diversity, flavor, and fun if it includes the possibility of costing a modicum of power.
Pretty telling about the aspect of human nature for some of us.
There’s nothing “RPG” about restricting covenant play.
RPG’s are about expanding player selection, not restricting it.
Where is the RPG element in me finding the Primus’ runeblade, and unlock the Seat of the Primus for the rebel necrolords, but then I can’t complete the storyline because I chose one of their allies as a covenant, instead?
You can have plenty of RPG elements that don’t impede gameplay like covenants do.
Why not do more class specific questlines? Why not do more with the glyph system? Why not revitalize the profession system to not be so boring? Do cool world zone stuff.
You don’t need to die game breakingly strong abilities to factions for the sake of “RPG elements” when there are plenty of RPG elements that are already in the game that are very lacking
Yeah it’s such a bad thing to want to be good at a video game. What a new and horrible concept. back in my day, nobody ever tried in video games! I swear!
People aren’t going to quit over this once they start playing Shadowlands. It really isn’t a big deal making a choice. People have been trained to cry wolf every time they don’t like something and Ion was a fool saying they have a ‘back up’ plan because what the heck did he think would happen. For people to actually give the system a legitimate try?