Not Telling the Whole Truth with Covenants (SL Beta Quest Spoilers)

Community General Discussion
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I made this post a few weeks ago in the Beta forums, but given the lack of response I feel it’s really important to share this with everyone. https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/please-consider-opening-all-covenant-main-quests-to-all/608563

Blizzard, I’m really starting to believe you’re not being honest with us when it comes to Covenants.

Today, you shared the first animation for Shadowlands, giving us the story of Uther’s Afterlife.

!!BETA SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT!!

When you start the main quest chain in SL, you are sent to every single area and experience an important story along the way. The first of these lands is Bastion.

Bastion’s main storyline involves those who have basically “fallen” from ascension to serve the Maw’s bigbad. I don’t want to go into details, but long story short, Uther has taken their side. You end up fending off the baddies and then you’re sent to the other parts of the Shadowlands to find out what’s going on. Each land is connected that leads to the ultimate “end” of the story where you then decide on your covenant.

Okay, so what does that matter, right? Well, the stories are half-finished. You know what has happened to Uther, so it’s time to continue at level 60 and finish the story, right?

Wrong.

Currently, when you pick your covenant, you are then locked out of the storylines for the rest of the Shadowlands. You are not allowed to finish the main story plots of the other zones. Only world quests are opened. You do not get to see what happens to Uther if you decide to pick, say, the Nightfae. Just as you do not get to see what happens to Ysera if you pick something other than the Nightfae, etc etc.

I cannot stress hard enough how bad this decision is. I completely understand Horde quests vs Alliance quests, but in Shadowlands all factions share the same story plot and quests. Why would you tell us that we’re the only one that can save Maldraxxus then keep us from saving them if I wanted to pick someone else for the gear, abilities, and cosmetic items??

On top of this, some covenant abilities are better for other classes than others, thus making it almost a forced choice if you do any sort of min/maxing or serious raiding.

If you hadn’t sent me to every zone and got my character heavily involved, and I mean HEAVILY involved, into the main plot story quest, I wouldn’t care as much that I can’t see the quests… But you did get my character involved to the point where you’re basically saying “we can’t do this without you.”

I think Brewa said it best on the Beta forums: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/please-consider-opening-all-covenant-main-quests-to-all/608563/22?u=tsunomi-stormrage

In class halls we have zero involvement or investment unless we are that class already. In the covenant campaigns we are FORCED to have involvement and investment with all 4 campaigns, in order to even choose a covenant. I can’t think of a previous situation where we did a storyline and were then told, “Nah, you can’t finish it” like this.

When you discussed the Covenants, you made a point to say that it’ll be very difficult to switch covenants. On top of that, it’ll take months of constant playing to even max out that covenant you chose. I’ve been playing this game for 15 years, and Tsunomi is my main hero, and currently, my only maxed character. It’s hard enough to log in as a casual player with no real guild. Why would I want to pour the months and months and months it’s going to take to fully help my FIRST covenant and then make an alt, level it to max level, and pour MONTHS AND MONTHS AND MONTHS into a character that I don’t enjoy playing as much as my main? (Plus, once you choose a covenant, you are given quests TO GO HELP THE OTHER COVENANTS, TOO!)

You have to be honest with yourself. Subscriptions are at a big low point. People are playing this game less and less. Do you really want to put your full expansion storyline in a position that’ll take more than a year to finish the FIRST game patch? Nevermind the later additions/content patches that add even more to the story…

I’m begging you as a long time WoW player to open the Main Plot/Storyline for everyone regardless of covenant. I am not asking for access to their special loot and abilities. I only want to know what happens to Uther without having to pour months just to see it on some alt I barely play.

Please, please consider opening those quests to everyone, regardless of the covenant.

Moderator: Edited to remove “Blizzard” from title. Use of “Blizzard,” “Blue,” “Devs,” and other callouts to draw attention to your threads is a violation of the forum rules.

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This is really important to me. Please do not leave me in silence. I really would like to hear the reasoning behind this decision.

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Stop being a story elitist and expecting to get to see all the story on one character, choosing which story you want to see just adds more weight to the mEanInGfUL cHoiCEs!!!1!1!

I expect to see something along those lines, be warned.

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Skyrim. You can do everything all the time with everyone.

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Kind of funny Blizz is pushing the “RNG” aspects of this xpac hard and then locks you to 1/4 of the story if you don’t want to switch Covenants. Boggles the mind but maybe they’ll relent and at least let you work on the story elements of each Covenant. I’m not terribly hopeful at this point…

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Sorry to say you’re playing the wrong game. Blizzard can’t just design a good game anymore. They have to design a half dozen systems and ingrain them into every facet of the game.

Elegant designs are nearly always better than convoluted ones. Blizzard, sadly, has forgotten that.

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I brought up this same point in another thread talking about how badly the overall covenant system is being implemented. It sucks how people are basically being punished at max level for choosing a covenant missing out on story and also abilities. Choosing feels more of a burden than a bonus.

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In shadowlands is there ever a reason given as to why you can only choose 1 covenant? Because it can’t be like Frenzyheart and Oricals where they hate each other as all of shadowlands works together to form their system.

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It doesn’t make since logically. In the interviews, they never mentioned anything like locking story line behind covenant as well. They made it out like the only thing special about a covenant is the unique rewards and covenant abilities. In fact, as I was leveling, I thought we would get 2 abilities that only work in that zone, and then a special ability that you get when you pick a covenant. Instead, it’s a “sample” of the abilities you get and you end up losing them once you pick the special one.

Nope. In fact, the covenant you pick gives you a daily reward quest to HELP THE OTHER COVENANTS.

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This is from another thread but basically speaks to how bad the system is and how I wish they would of implemented it.

My problem is Blizzard has a horrible track record of balancing the outliers and sometimes just leaves broken/useless talents and specs untouched for an entire expansion. It will be a determent to the overall health of the game. I don’t know how they came up with the convoluted implementation of covenants.

One of the biggest gripes a lot of people had with Legion was how if you didn’t play every class you missed out on some really cool story elements. If I was on the dev team I would of insisted on making every covenant story available to every player regardless of them declaring they were going to join X covenant. As the Maw Walker you could imagine they would all want your services as you can travel to the Maw to retrieve anima where they cannot. Each Covenant story could of been about developing relationships with the soulbinds within each covenant up to a certain point in the story(most likely the stories will all converge eventually or you’d be locked out if the last part is something like the Legion Class hall mount quests).

Soulbinds could of been unteathered from Covenants with the caveat of picking/declaring for a covenant could give you a massive renown bonus for Soulbinds related to that covenant. Instead of punishing people for choosing wrong, reward them from choosing what they want.

From there come up with maybe 2-3 utility spells shared across all classes instead of 4 and design them in a way to have effects based on your chosen covenant. For example Soulshape could of been a Fox for Night Fae, Vampire Bat for Venthyr, Owl for Bastion and Bone Wolf for Necrolord.

Same goes for the covenant Class abilities, I would of gladly taken a choice of 3 spells on a new talent row with different effects/animations depending on which Covenant I was declared for.

I personally would of much rather had this kind of player agency when coming to a choice of covenant. Make the choice permanent with no way to declare for a new Covenant locking you into that specific aesthetic for the entirety of Shadowlands while still having the ability to play your character to the best of their abilities in any type of content. The min-max players might still choose their “best” covenant to max out their top Soulbind’s renown as fast as possible while the rest of us would just enjoy being able to pick what we want to play for RP/RPG purposes.

When you look at the first tier of buffs in the soulbinds the slots related to the specific utility spells Blizzard could of decided to make equivalents across all covenants.

For example if they had Kleia, Theotar, Korayn, and Emeni all have dmg and utility slots in the second tier then they would of been able to swap any of their first tier utility spell buffs for any of the utility abilities depending on what you have slotted talent wise while leaving the rest of the tree unique to the soulbind.

There were so many better ways for Blizzard to implement the system but it’s too late now. We’re stuck with what they are giving us and even if covenants become easily swappable in the future it will end up taking away from the RPG player agency.

I value both customisation in roleplaying as I do being able to min-max my character. Players like me are being put in a really crappy position where i think the dread of being forced to choose will have me quitting the first time I want to try content where my covenant choice becomes more of a burden than bonus.

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Then in that case it is extremely dumb we can’t finish the already started story in the other zones when they straight up tell our characters we are the only one that can help.

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That sounds incredibly stupid.

What if you want to do quests with friends? If you’re different Covenants, you can’t?

I wonder if you can party sync into the other Covenants’ quests. I’m not sure whether that would make things better or worse.

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I couldn’t agree more. Thank you for your point of view.

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I guess legion was bad because the majority of it resided on which class you happened to play.

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I didn’t like legion

Borrowed power has no place in Wow. :-1:

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That’s a false equivalency. We didn’t spend 1/4 of our time leveling though other class hall quests. Covenants and Class Hall/Organizations are totally different entities.

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Trying to avoid spoilers, but basically you go to Bastion > Maldraxxus > Ardenweld > Ravenholdt > Pick a Covenant

Each zone has a main story plot, but halfway through it, you go to the next zone to find out what’s happening to the Shadowlands. I got to level 60 before I picked a covenant.

After picking a covenant, I continued the Ysera storyline, and saw the Main “!” for the next plot quests in each zone. However, due to bugs, I was blocked from reentering the main hub of Maldraxxus, and I was kicked out of the Bastion hub after completing part of the follow up questline.

The only quests opened to everyone after picking a covenant are generic world quests that have nothing to do with the main plot questline.

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Why would a nightfae see what happens to a kyrian in bastion. This is flavor. This has me level alts to check that story out. I see it as a parrallel to Legion Class halls. This need to want everything all the time is starting to smell.

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I actually countered this in the first post, but I’ll repost it just for you:

In class halls we have zero involvement or investment unless we are that class already. In the covenant campaigns we are FORCED to have involvement and investment with all 4 campaigns, in order to even choose a covenant. I can’t think of a previous situation where we did a storyline and were then told, “Nah, you can’t finish it” like this.

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This is so sad… this is another ding against SL.

:cookie:

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