Covenants are small reputation and you will be able to switch between them, so the “heavy” lockout comparable to older rpgs is not even doable. And the main reason people want that is nostalgia.
Moreover, wow is a rpg as long as you’re playing a role. It doesn’t matter how the game is structured.
And the covenants decision is not even your choice because you don’t have the freedom to say no. And it’s only “one time” choice, that won’t matter in the future. You don’t really get more player agency, this is just a lie.
There’s no reason that covenants should matter more on any gameplay level more than race, classes or faction. And with their abilities that can be upgraded and soulbinds, they are too meaningful for what they are. Small reps that will be gone by next expansion.
And for what they are, borrowed power system some people should wake up and see the problem. Those will just be a reason to handicaps class gameplay. Because they will keep building them up throught the expansion, so there need to be void in the class design to fill.
The best example I can. Think of is paladin.
I like the idea of the kyrian one. 5 avengers shields on keys will be amazing. But it will do almost nothing useful in raid.
As holy 5 holy shocks sounds great. If I plan on raiding though people will be annoyed of I don’t play the night fae one that gives a damage boost to my party and then it’s even worse because I will be told to get to the right season and stop pressing any spenders.
They need to make it swappable or it will be awful.
I don’t care if there are hoops to jump through or if you have to finish a tree with one before being able to pick a second then third etc but there needs to be something
There is something appealing about the weight attached to making ‘permanent’ or in this case ‘semi-permanent’ decisions.
Its like talent trees and stat points where your decisions carry some weight. Nowadays you just swap everything around at a moments notice which IMO is more of a detriment to the experience.
At the same time the issues are very obvious with Covenants in that every spec is going to have a BiS set of abilities and if you don’t use them its an instant disadvantage - this is a real catch-22 and given Covenants are so closely tied to the lore of Shadowlands I feel restricting peoples choices is going to frustrate many players who are stuck because they need to a specific Covenant ability or worse restricted because different content requires a different ability which isn’t accessible without changing Covenants.
The whole concept of ‘player agency’ Blizzard was happy to hero has been thrown out the window with the Covenant ability system.
This is not true, the soulbinds are associated with your covenant, not your class ability.
You can use the class abilities before even finding out about the soulbinds, what kind of point is this?
Just go look on the datamined soulbinds and conduits to socket in them, there is nothing that matches the covenant class spell and the soulbinds of that covenant together. I think you might’ve misunderstood an interview with Ion where he hinted that some Legendaries could empower your covenant class spell.
Just please don’t spread misinformation and check things up before saying something…
From what i’ve seen, some soulbinds interacted with the covenant abilities. I remember one in specific being activated when you got out of the animal form from the night fae, not sure about anyone having ties to the class covenant ability, if ends up having none, then sorry I was honestly thinking it was the case.
I like to play WoW in that way - but don’t want it forced on players.
With our current systems, I have the option to play my character that way and others have the option to make choices for each boss/dungeon/arena.
I wouldn’t want the restrictive way to be forced on everyone since the appeal to players like us is subjective - and for others it may have the exact opposite effect.
The people who are pro keeping it the way they are are the ones who are trying to stick it to the man. Of course there are people who aren’t for keeping the current system that aren’t the 1%.
Great News! It turns out a lot more people actually care about the power of their character and being their strongest version of themselves! Wild results!