Quite simply because self-imposed restrictions and the universal rules of a game don’t feel the same. It does not take an advanced degree in human psychology to understand why.
Doesn’t this get flipped entirely on its head when the whole premise of the Warcraft franchise is Horde vs Alliance yet we team up literally every tier and can even queue up as the other in certain content?
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Pull the ripcord! I wish we could get enough players go back this. I feel like it would make the expansion a lot better
There’s so many ways they could go about this while also keeping the current system very similar.
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A bit. I like playing off-meta decks in Hearthstone and not being a meta-slave. I like being able to play a class I enjoy without it coming at odds with the fact that Druid is the most popular class and a big FOTM in many respects.
I also do like the Kyrian stuff a lot. If we end up being Covenant-specific bear and cat forms, a Forsworn Angel Bear sounds really dope to me. Although Vampire Bear could be pretty sweet too, I dunno.
But even those things considered, I’m not going to make decisions during prog and what-not to gimp my character. So that means when I do play content, if the system was open, I would feel forced to swap to the best Covenant for progression, and then swap back to the Covenant I like. Whereas right now, with the restrictions to swapping being so severe, I can just play the Covenant I like and nobody is realistically going to tell me otherwise simply because swapping is such a burden. Just like people won’t tell someone to change their class for progression simply because their class isn’t the best for a fight.
I play an enhancement shaman for progression and can pump plenty hard, while Enhancement is hardly meta. Could the balance be better? Yeah. But nobody has the right to tell me what class I’m going to play, and I’ve earned my raid slot and can feel comfortable playing what I want to play. Similarly with my Covenant on my Bear currently. But if the system was open, if swapping was easy and doable, then realistically we would live in a world where people would get harassed over it on a fight to fight basis. We already see BM hunters get harassed to play Marks, even if people like the BM playstyle or whatever. You would see a level of harassment about Covenants you don’t currently see.
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jesus who asked
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It is kind of implied when making a statement like “people only pretend to care to rustle jimmies”.
The counter-argument to “You don’t care” is “Actually I do”.
Oh, and if you’re going to say that you don’t care that I care, I mean… A) you do ask in your OP about it as well, and B) I don’t care if you don’t care that I care, you not caring that I care is not going to make me not stop caring. I like the Covenant stuff. I’m going to support Blizzard’s decision to keep the Covenants the way they are. It’s pretty obvious there are enough people like me for them to continue doing so, or else they’d already have started turning the ship the other way rather than leaning into Covenants even harder (Covenant exclusive legendaries seem like a strong condemnation of the idea that Covenant-likers are a minority).
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Whenever people fall back on “all publicity is good publicity” it comes across as incredibly desperate.
Except that I didn’t say that.
For a number of players it’s probably pretty hype to be like “I am a Vampire” and not like “Oh, I guess I can use this red swirly magic stuff sometimes, and this fairy magic stuff sometimes if I feel like it”. Blizzard sells Class Fantasy, and now they’re selling “Class Fantasy, but Mini and Temporary”. Like limited time McRibs I guess.
You act like this crap doesn’t already happen. The overwhelming majority of each spec chose their best covenant. You, a Heroic hero, decided to pick the 2nd best and think that proves the system works. You’re only kidding yourself. People picking sub-par covenants already face prejudice for their choice and it’s spectacularly naive to think this is something that’s prevented from the choice being locked in… but, hey, “spectacularly naive” describes every single anti-ripcord argument so this isn’t exactly a surprise.
If covenants were easily swappable you would have a similar situation; you would have people sticking to what they like and people picking what’s best for the situation; only they wouldn’t have to level 4 characters of the same class to do that. It’s a net gain for everyone. And we all know they’ll probably do it later in the expansion because this has been their MO since WoD; release an expansion with gimped core system design and then “fix” the system design later on to give the expansion a second wind. Remember how WoD would never get flying? Or how Legion would never have purchaseable legendaries? Or how BFA would never have purchaseable corruption? Imagine falling for this literally every time. “Spectacularly naive” indeed.
Being a locked-in choice really doesn’t make it any greater a part of your player’s identity than it otherwise would be because, get this, you would still have a group of people picking and staying based on personal preference and a group of people picking based on the competitive aspect.
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Or understanding of how reality works. Depends gow full or empty your glass is i guess 
And that reasoning is completely independent of the ripcord being pulled.
You liking Kyrian is a fine reason for picking Kyrian, but you’re aware enough to not go down that rabbit hole deep enough to pick Necro or Venthyr, because even if they cosmetics or storyline are good, they’re outright awful.
Picking the “good enough” covenant and proclaiming the system works is odd reasoning at best.
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Conveniently Venthyr noises intensifies.
Crazy man, you managed to land on the covenant that all enhancements use because it’s the least clunky just because you care about Venthyr heaps, not because it’s the only non clunky option.
Happy conveniences.
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Please keep beating the drum about being a special snowflake who doesn’t care about covenants because of the dire choices while happily using the best one on your main 
.
Just so we’re clear, this has been covered at length but Enhancement shaman is one of the outliers where all the covenants are extremely close and people just pick Venthyr because it works with Maelstrom for instant cast and is the least clunky of all.
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6/10 M but okay bub.
My bear is Kyrian, and my Warrior is Night Fae. If I want coverage of all four Covenants to play the campaign, that leaves 2 options open for Shamans. It’s also worth saying I have both a Venthyr Shaman AND a Necrolord Shaman.
Secondly, why would I NOT like Venthyr on Shaman? It feels good. Haste feels good, and Chain Harvest feels good. Evidently Necrolord Witch Bones is starting to creep up on Venthyr for specific fights but I’m not going to swap - most likely going to roll straight into 9.1 as Venthyr regardless of how the cookie crumbles.
Side-note: I’m playing an enhancement shaman for raid when they’re one of the weakest specs this patch. Imagine trying to imply I chase FOTM.
Then isn’t that proof that Blizzard can do more to balance the specs rather than scrap the whole system? If they can do it for Shaman they can do it for others.
Could the balance be better? Sure. You don’t throw the baby out with the bath water though.
The thing that people keep willfully ignoring, is that they have made absolutely no secret that they hate the meta of swapping talents between pulls, or swapping azerite powers between dungeons. They explicitly want the game to go back to meaningful choices that you must either live with, or suffer increasing costs to change.
This is very likely only a first iteration to slowly walk back the toxic min/max community, before they revamp the talents back to the full fledged trees that couldn’t be swapped as easily. I expect that to probably land in the next expansion, maybe along with more defining racials, instead of the current racials that might as well not exist.
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This is incredibly naive because min/maxing is done relative to the features available to us to min/max.
The result is everyone that raids picking 95%+ the same covenant builds.
Hurting the entirety of the game to spite “min/maxers” is an embarrassingly bad philosophy, because nothing can stop min/maxing unless every character is just given an identical template that cannot be changed. No more gear, talents, rotations, etc.
Caring about numbers is not “toxic.” Wanting to spite entire player bases on the other hand…
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there was no choice here if you want what is BiS for your role
You are mistaking his point.
You have “character” and you have “kit”. In modern WoW, what defines your character is so, so, so very small at this point compared to “kit”. Blizzard wants to bring back more “character” and shrink the “kit” a bit. Making Covenants swappable is literally the opposite of what they want to do, because it’d reduce a “character” choice while also growing the “kit”.
What iteration of WoW would you say best describes what you think their goal is?
We have known since they announced the expansion about the covenant choice. It’s not Ion’s fault you crybabies want to switch covenants every other raid boss.