Several abilities, three “talent trees”, unique class perks, exclusive conduit passive perks, exclusive Torghast abilities (and the promise of exclusive legendaries, although it doesn’t sound like we’re get them at 9.0), and a number of other systems, why shouildn’t the decision be treated like deciding your class? It’s obviously not as weighty as a class, but that’s why it is a “sub-class” rather than a “dual-class”.
Then do that with Covenants. Whatever strokes your fancy.
And his counter argument for that was quite good as well.
He said he enjoyed the kyrian leveling zone quite a bit and did all the quests. Next was Maldraxus, and he rushed through it because the zone didnt appeal to him.
So how much testing did he get to do with the maldraxus abilities?
What if its slow and cumbersome in leveling gear, but speeds up and becomes amazing woth more haste or mastery later on? There are loads of variables that come into play when just test driving through leveling.
You know what will likely happen? People will inevitable go sesrching the internet to find someone who did the research and lays out the pros and cons for each one. Thus the player will end up choosing what sounds the best or is most optimal based off that research.
How much player agency is there in that? And we will end up likely siding with what helps the class perform the best.
I like blizzard venturing outside their comfort zone, but there seem to be quite a few pitfalls.
Another side note is the weekly covenant activity. You dont test drive those while leveling. What if throwing a part sucks and I want to build my own abomination? But joining maldraxus maybe has an ability that sucks horribly and I dont like the look of the gear?
A difficult decision doesnt have to be needlessly complex…
The whole “try things out for fun” is something Blizzard has really missed HARD over the last few expansions.
Legion - all these cool legendaries. Would be awesome to try them out just for kicks. Nope. Vast majority of people never saw every legendary for a single class, much less on alts.
BfA - well, we all know how this one was between extreme RNG and time-gated grinds.
Shadowlands - shaping up to be even worse than BfA in terms of trying out new things. Hell, you can’t even swap away from your Covenant on your main unless you’re really sure you don’t mind putting in a lot of work to switch back.
That sounds really cool the way you put it. But I think I speak for a fair bit of people here, picking a sub-class would mean that I would be able to keep the things that I work for and it wouldn’t be taken away from me after 2 years.
Based on their track record that doesn’t seem like the case here. So I’m picking a sub-class for a couple of years and then it’s going to get ripped away for the next sub-class option in 2022?
It’s annoying enough to deal with class and role restrictions. Now they add another layer to the game that comes with even more restrictions.
They keep saying it’s for “player agency” and “meaningful choices”, but that never makes logical sense and only ends up feeling like they’re trying to force us to grind more on multiple characters.
The talent points only mattered because the trees had points-spent requirements to get to the next tiers. They weren’t at all hard to swap, and the number of impactful abilities that players spent talent “points” to get to was by the end of Cataclysm roughly equal to the number of talent row choices we got starting in Mists of Pandaria.
I.E. if you want to treat your covenant like your third talent row and click a button to unmake your decision at-will. I’m fine with that inclination being curbed; it’s okay to commit to things (again, like class).
The operative term in your reply and the root of the problem here is ‘need.’ No one ‘needs’ the night fae’s sprint ability on this boss encounter. You want it because it would make it slightly easier. Well, the covenant ability that you did end up picking will make a different encounter more easy.
Strengths. Weaknesses. Pretty standard affair RPG elements, guys. When asked which covenant is best, if the answer is “it depends” then they’ve done their job right. None of what we’re discussing here is mandatory at all.
Well it’s purely speculation on my part but my theory is that Covenants are a testing ground for concepts for WoW 2 / 10.0. If Covenants work, that’s the green-light to go forward with a more expansive evergreen sub-class system.
Blizzard always trials major systems. Titanforging was thunderforging. Raid-scaling was trialed with “flex raids” in SoO. They lay the groundwork, test the feature, get feedback, and iterate.
You won’t have your Covenants in 2023, but you may have something else in their place that is more permanent.
I just want to try out all these cool things that Blizzard has put into the game without having to have them locked behind Covenants. Maybe this DK who I did a dungeon with has this cool build for his Frost spec as a Kyrian, and I want to try it out. Nope, sorry you can’t do that because you picked Maldraxxus! 
I really hope you’re right. Because a lot of these Soulbinds and stuff look really cool and I’d hate for all of Blizzard’s hard work to be thrown out of the window.
The whole “meaningful choices” thing was only ever brought up by people complaining about how their story choices didn’t seem to matter at all. As in, support Sylvanas/Saurfang, don’t want to burn down Teldrassil/do want to wear N’Zoth’s eye, etc.
It was NEVER meant to say “make the current class/spec system even more restrictive by adding another layer on top of it.”
The people saying it that way now are just a bunch of seagulls harping on the slang Ion uses to justify doing whatever makes his ego feel good.
I feel you.
These same people seem to enjoy others being punished for simply wanting to play the game.
Multiple slaps to the face. Multiples…
I really dont understand why there are two sides of the fence on this system. Do you not swap specs regularly? Do you not have multiple sets of gear for content? Do you not swap essences and azeroth traits for different content and/or specs? Isnt this stuff normal or am i oblivious here? I just dont understand it. Who in the world actually swaps all that stuff for trash pulls anyway. Who cares, right?
I like how preach puts it in the video. People are going to jump for joy cause they cant swap covenant abilities. Sounds super fun. Lol.
I’m glad I have one of every class. I’ll pick a main and choose the “right” covenant on it and then play the rest for the RP stuff and not worry about running cutting edge content on them.
It might be the problem that a certain player has, but it’s not the problem that I stated in my OP. I know I don’t need a certain ability to push for 2200 in SL, or get AotC in the first patch. I just simply want to try out cool abilities and specs that Blizzard worked their butts off putting into the game, and their telling me I’m not allowed to do that because of a choice built on RP morals, aesthetics, and values.
I agree with you here man, spot on. However, I want to be able to switch and try things out to see if it works with my game play and the way I like to play the game.
“Hey, this Kyrian ability looks really cool, I want to give it a go in BGs and see how I like it”
Blizzard: “Too bad Mellin, you picked Maldraxxus so now you can’t try this cool ability we added for your class because you don’t want to be a wannabe Paladin and hang with the owls. Sorry!”
So much of their identity is wrapped up in “I like WoW” that they view any kind of criticism as being directed towards themselves, then they reflexively take the opposite view as a defense mechanism.
Ask any of them to follow through logically and tell you if there should be an end point to the number of restrictions and layers. Won’t happen.
my reservation is I want to play the story and content of bonerbois while also wanting to play with conflicting soulbinds and abilities, so I have to pick outside the covenant that I actually want to join for what they are, because I like how the gameplay looks for condemn over banner
Ummm…sounds to me like this Preach person didn’t do much in the way of research themselves.
We will be able to swap soulbinds and conduits around if we need to.
There is also a chance to swap your entire covenant if you really don’t like it. There’s a reason I don’t just hang on the words of a steamer.
You’ll be able to do that just fine.
Conduits are destroyed when you change them.
One-way, one-time change is not the same as swapping talents.