Basically this.
The longer the expansion goes on, the more people are going to see the glaring flaws in this pointless covenant lock system tied to power. People will run out of things to do and the thought of basically undoing all there covenant progress to try something new on that character will not be a appealing one, at least not to me.
Unless you have 3 other alts ready to go and the patience to farm all the renown that is. Also not really an appealing thought.
Yeah there’s 0 chances i’m rerolling. I’m fine with making due with what i have but this game being a social thing, its means dealing with pointless arguments and such as to why im not blindly following the meta.
They seem to feel pretty strongly about covenant choice so I cant see them pulling anything to appease people.
It would be pretty fun being able to change at will
They can’t pull something that was never created and at this point they don’t have the time that would be needed to reinvent the SL experience. They need to be more focused upon wrapping this mess up and not making the same mistakes in the next expansion.
i think you’re making the right call. i have yet to see people in pugs demanding kyrian resto. there are definitely some weaknesses with DST but it’s not terrible either and for people who aren’t pushing 20s yet i don’t think the difference matters for most groups. like if a group is struggling in a 15 to where vesper totem is going to make the difference, the healer isn’t the problem.
edit: but yes, i understand and agree with your point. community perception matters even if it’s based on skewed ideas or outdated numbers
Their PRIDE was last season.
This season… they are just TORMENTING us.
Next season the LAUGHING affix will be in full effect.
Finally, in season 4, they’ll PULLINGTHERIPCODE affix us, just in time for the next expansion to drop.
I am fairly certain we’ll see in 9.2 the covenants opening up and we freely able to swap around. What you have to understand about Blizzard is they are all about making things hard and annoying but easily fixable so they can do the minimal amount of work later and call it a big win.
It would make sense with the narrative too…with the anima drought over (9.0) and the covenant alliances/bonds reforged and them actively working together (9.1), the covenants freely travelling to each other to visit and help out and your acts and deeds in the campaign allow your renown to be shared amongst all of them and all of the covenants see you as the hero and allow you to come and go at will.
My guess is we’ll still be locked to one covenant for the ability but freely able to swap and/or invest in the 4 covenant sanctums at will. I know I’m already planning to swap and trying to see if I can do things in a way to be Vethnyr every weekend but a different covenant through the week purely because I have literally nothing left to farm or collect…I’m already anima capped with my bags loaded down with anima and literally nothing to spend it on (I won’t waste it all on worthless mats for absurd prices).
I have a feeling if they did, like a Bugs Bunny cartoon, there’d be an anvil in their parachute bag rather than a parachute.
Yeah the point is that i’m pushing beyond 15s, which is where healers start to be almost strictly valued by their dps output.
That’s another can of worm entirely and a much more nuanced issue than covenants though.
While I 1000% agree with you, is there even a point at this point?
This is what’s been kind of confusing me about the forums, maybe I’m just overthinking it. But the state and future of this game is kind of in limbo until we know the result and outcomes of the lawsuit placed by California.
As a dev or two confirmed on Twitter, no work is being done on WoW. Until the lawsuit is handled, I feel like Shadowlands, WoW in general is dead in the water. 
All these posts, acting like the devs are back to work already. Nothing happened, genuinely confuses me.
Either that or I’m overthinking it. 
that is not what was said. you must know the difference between “right now” and “for the foreseeable future”
I believe it’s a reasonable assertion to make that work is not being done until these lawsuits are settled and workers are satisfied with the changes they make.
Until we get confirmation of such I will continue to be unsubbed, runs out in October. As a consumer, I prefer not to keep paying for a product not being actively developed or worked on.
is there any actual reason to suspect that? if they don’t work, blizzard won’t pay them. most of the developers on the team are not independently wealthy.
Just pick what looks cool. How it should have been from the start.
A survey for literally anything they want to know about would be easy and smart. They won’t do it. There is a system in place to send out surveys, one per account, and they don’t use it. They don’t care what we want, unless what we want lines up perfectly with what they want.
Why would they even need a survey? The stats on how covenants are playing out are pretty clear that their goals for “meaningful choices” failed hard.
All a survey would do is prove how wrong they were - why would they do this?
To drive the point home they’re building this game for an audience first?
Survey doesn’t have to come from the devs themselves, just the company.
No, it’s not…
Plenty of work has been getting done.
