"The big fear we have is the covenant abilities. The covenant abilities look like they’re going to be creating a choice that feels negative and incentivizes us to play multiple characters of the same class rather than giving us an actual choice that feels good to make.
It’s the system I’m expecting to be broken in 9.0, broken in 9.1, pretty broken in 9.2 and fixed in 9.3. I don’t want another expansion of that."
“Imagine being locked into an Essence in a similar way.”
“It feels like we’ve got a gun to our head and we’re making a choice that is the least bad.”
"Even if you want to play at a moderate level, you’re going to be sacrificing a lot" - highlighting that this system impacts players well below the top 1%.
I have to agree. Nothing about the current system seems fun or rewarding even though I’m a casual player that enjoys role-playing.
It’s also not surprising that a guild which emphasizes raid performance is worried about the game not letting you easily optimize every single fight in a raid.
I’d disagree that the game should be designed around Method and guilds like them, though.
Of course I’d say that borrowed power in general just shouldn’t be in the game, but I’d still say that respeccing for individual boss fights shouldn’t really be a thing for most players.
Will covenants be the new raider io gatekeeper? Yes. Will I care? No. Why? Because I stopped doing high end content. Just become a filthy casual and you too could actually start enjoying this game
I want to make a choice about my character. The only time World of Warcraft, in the modern day, is an actual RPG is when you create your character. All other deep RPG decisions have been stripped out of the game over the years.
In fact, I will make this argument - Covenants are a FAILURE if they don’t feel bad for Method. Because the choices need to matter for them to matter, and if they matter, then someone who min-maxes and doesn’t have perfect information on the meta will need to roll all four Covenants. If you want to play a game that isn’t meant to be a World First Racing game as a WFRacing game, then that is the way it has to be. If you don’t want to play four of the same character, you shouldn’t compete in the World First Race. Go play FFXIV instead. I’m looking forward to WoW being an RPG again.
There are lots of players and guilds well below Method’s level that also get negatively impacted for the same reasons. Especially players that tank in Raids but want to dps in PvP.
Even though I am a bit concerned about this as well the truth is the only ones this will affect are the 1%'ers in the world first races. The rest of us, not so much. And quite frankly I’m really tired of the game being built around the 1% which often screws over the majority of players. So they’ll have to get creative to be world’s first now, boo hoo.
They’re probably right, but most raiders won’t have to maintain multiple characters unless you’re very serious about competing for a World top 50 or something like that.
So a guild that has a serious financial stake in being the best at WoW is not a fan of something that may make being 100% optimal at all times more difficult.
But why does it have to be good for either you OR them? If Blizzard would just remove all unique abilities associated with the covenants, than we would make our decision based solely on what interests us. I don’t believe that they have to give unique abilities in order for people to be interested in them.
They each have their own story lines and aesthetics. That alone is enough to make me want to level at least one toon for each covenant so that I can experience them all.
