We’ve moved on from the ripcord. Now it’s time to pull the emergency chute before going splat on the pavement.
What is the emergency chute? Allowing us to play all 4 Covenants at once. Unlocking each zone’s travel networks and anima conductors. Getting to choose from all 4 signature abilities and class abilities. Boosting anima gains dramatically so we can afford to unlock it all.
It’s really dumb that we have to pick one. Do we need to forsake all of our reputations to gain rep with a new faction? How many are we exalted with now? We even see the Covenants working together against the jailer. But for some reason, we can’t gain rewards from all 4 at once? Or use the abilities of all 4?
They divided the game up into 4 sections and made the grind so hard that repeating it is almost impossible on alts. Everyone feels like they only got 25% of the expansion per character. No wonder they are bored and leaving in droves.
THing is we want people to want to keep their covenant affiliation . All we are about is separating the player power from the covenants and making things like the covenant class abilities into talents. Ion says doing so would unravel the system but I’m calling b.s. because I’m not even a programmer and even I have a way to make it work , especially with the adding to the soul binds coming in 9.1.
All it would take to make any of the class abilities work with a soul bind from any covenant is just 1 conduit.
I don’t think they even have to go that far. From a lore perspective it makes sense that soulbinds are tied to the covenant abilities, for example, in kyrian, pelagos main tier 1 ability enhances your class covenant ability. I get that some systems like that would cause problems. So all they need to do is allow you to choose any soulbind from any of the covenants and you get the abilities based on the soulbind.
I choose pelagos as my soulbind then I get the kyrian abilities, I choose Niya as my soulbind I get the Night Fae abilities. I mean the system worked through the leveling process so it really should be in place already.
Also lore wise the whole thing is stupid anyway. Necrolords, Venthyr, those covenants wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for your character. You established their base of operations, primus only spoke to you, you were the only one that could wield his blade, opened up the seat of the primus that nobody could do before. Same thing with Venthyr in Sinfall, cleared it out, literally rescued Renethal from the maw to bring him back and establish his rebellion. But hey I decided to give anima to kyrians so now i’m no longer welcome in these places I helped establish, even though we have the same goals and obviously i’m still the famous “maw walker” they wouldn’t want to push you out in any realistic scenerio…except in Ions head I guess.
I don’t know how anybody can read through this thread, see how aggressively excited the rabid forum casuals were about all of Shadowlands features, and then also post today that everything in Shadowlands has been designed for the raiders/toxic 1%ers.
The delusion on this forum is actually astounding.
With this likely being patch 1 of 6, maybe 7, Blizzard will continue to flip-flop with substantial changes to covenants and the primary borrowed power we get from them (extra 2 talent points, let’s be real). Given their track record and the contents of this coming patch, no one can argue that that isn’t going to be the outcome for patches beyond 9.0.5. They’ll continue to make sweeping changes nerfing this, buffing that every time there’s enough crying done.
With that said, since this will be the end-outcome with every patch from here on out, #PullTheRipcord is 300% in order. This was always going to be the case.
I get the idea of wanting to make choices more permanent and relevant to the RP side of the game, but the lore behind it is extremely weak and it’s an absolutely brainlet idea to do so when sweeping changes are made on the fly and that those changes do directly and visibly affect outcomes in competitive pvp & pve scenarios.
I even have a Lore based motivation for pulling it, and allowing free mingling - now that we’ve seen the trailer for 9.1, the Covenants unite and cry: “Champions! Arm yourself as you see fit!”
