On a personal, anecdotal level, I feel like Covenants were really successful for me. Barring Venthyr, all the options looked really fun and compelling, and I could have seen myself playing any of them and enjoying it.
NF for Brewmaster isn’t the most meta pick, but I like it a lot. I really like the Covenant system in general as it is.
This is not skydiving there is no ripcord.
"pull the ripcord’ is meaningless without a defined ripcord.
I’m about as fierce a ripcord supporter as they come, but even I find it extremely weird that any covenant would consider it a “betrayal” if you joined a different covenant for a bit even after dedicating your time and energy into resolving the anima and political issues of the covenant you are breaking away from.
The covenants aren’t at war and are generally united towards resolving shared issues. In 9.1, the common causes between covenants will only get stronger as the Jailer’s forces become a universal evil.
Why on earth would the venthyr take issue with the maw walker joining the night fae? Feels like that would only be a thing if there was legitimate conflict between the two covenants.
They wouldn’t. That’s one of the hypocritical aspects to the restrictions.
Honestly, they’re a haughty bunch that would probably make you organize tea parties for a few centuries if you left and wanted back in.
Why on earth would two allied countries have a sense of rivalry between them, or keep secrets from each other, or compete with each other economically? That makes no sense, they’re allies. It must never happen.
Ah, yes. I forgot dual citizenship didn’t exist 
We even had a President who at one time could have claimed Kenyan citizenship (but declined) and not a soul uttered a peep a protest!
No, no, you’re either actively at war or basically family. There is no in-between.
It doesn’t everywhere, and it doesn’t confer the same rights in every country! Thanks for expanding the example for me! Good to have another on side! 
Everywhere? No. But the entire reason it exists is to promote cooperation between nations with shared political/social/economic interests. It’s the main reason why you see it available in major geo-political powers like the U.S., Canada, and the big names of the EU (France, Germany, Spain, Greece, etc.)
Likening the covenants to independent nations is a bit wonky anyway. They all exist with the explicit purpose of serving the greater functions of the Shadowlands. Literally none of the covenants can effectively function unless the other three are also healthy. They aren’t so much “states” in the political sense as they are autonomous regions subservient to a greater political authority (in this case, the Arbiter).
Regardless, if those aren’t shared socio-political interests, then I don’t really know what is.
Big agree with the other reply. The fact is that whether or not that setup you found works better for you or not is irrelevant as there will always be a correct choice, and if your choice is not that choice then you likely will not perform as well as someone who made the other choice, regardless of how meaningful your choice was. If you’re a disc priest at the beginning of CN, it’s possible that evangelism works better for you, but it doesn’t matter because I will out heal you and cover more mechanics than you every single time because I chose spirit shell, and in that case there is no reason that a group wouldn’t take the spirit shell priest over the evangelism priest. It’s an unfortunate reality. Take Spriests in M+, the community largely viewed them as worse than most other classes so they were invited less than other classes. In my anecdotal experience it was difficult for spriests to pug KSM.
They are not pulling the ripcord lol. Ppl hating it don’t vote with their wallet. 
From a story perspective the “betrayal” doesn’t make sense. There isn’t a single covenant quest where you betray one of the others. They’re all about cooperating to take down the Jailer and his minions. Let’s just face it, WoW’s writing team sucks