I’m not even sure where this idea that a covenant would shun you even came from.
They all let you try out their abilities.
They’re all working for a common goal, even if their tactics are vastly different from each other.
When was there EVER animosity between them? Because clearly I must have missed it.
Maldraxxus attacking Bastion had nothing to do with the Necrolords.
The Venthyr weren’t sided with Sire Denathrius.
The Night Fae just want everyone to shut the hell up and let them frolic.
Even early campaign quests in 9.0’s story had multiple cases where they were working side by side.
They all saw the value in the Maw Walker, and even if we are just mortals, the storytelling has failed to convince me that the covenants wouldn’t bend over backwards to invite me back into their covenant rather than make me prove my worth when I was the only reason I can bring them souls back from the Maw in the first place. Especially since, well, gestures wildly at the inactive Arbiter.
It fails from a gameplay perspective.
It fails from a story perspective.
It fails from a fun perspective, because I have multiple characters stuck with covenants whose rewards I am not interested in solely because of a handful of passive effects and an ability. I’m honestly surprised that two expansions of overwhelmingly negative feedback to borrowed power compelled you to try this experiment a third time.
The poor balancing of covenant abilities and soulbinds are why I no longer raid or PvE regularly, because I feel compelled to optimize for PvP and the limitations and time investment prevent me from realistically diversifying in specs/builds for PvE.
Just pull the ripcord permanently, we’re begging you.
33 Likes
It seems like you can just finish the “rebuilding our trust” quest immediately and whenever it goes live you can go to whichever covenant you want.
That said, I am in the same boat and I hope it either resets any active quests for going back or they announce before it goes live so i can go do a few dungeons and finish that quest to swap freely after.
All of this stubborness when at 9.3 if there is a 9.3 they might just lift any sort of restriction…
Lets not forget the lame system to get more anima either… spend alot then and only then you start getting some back…
8 Likes
Ha @ team choices 
But this kind of isn’t a meaningful choice. Generally, the actual correct choice is to go for the covenant ability that lets you perform to the best of your ability. But Blizz seems to think that the correct choice is the one we want for lore/aesthetics. They seem not to want us chasing the power exactly, and yet they’re ignoring the reality, the context of the game in which the system exists and must operate.
I can either make the choice Blizz thinks I should (which is to stay with my current covenant, which it’s worth noting other Disc priests may not have been happy with pre-9.1), or the choice which keeps me as effective as possible within the context of my chosen spec. I don’t care that my group isn’t bleeding edge, any improvement I can provide in my own performance helps the group regardless.
I feel irresponsible if I stay with my current covenant. But I will feel resentful and unhappy with my own gameplay experience and character identity if I swap to the one that will best offset the changes to my spec.
It doesn’t feel meaningful, it feels arbitrary. By making the stakes so high for the “choice”, they’re providing a kind of illusion that it’s meaningful, but it’s not. Either choice (lore/aesthetics and ability set) on its own could be. They’ve confused severity of consequence directly with “meaningfulness”, and it’s so much more nuanced than that.
8 Likes
If you mean lore-wise, I guess they’re all children who get mad when you don’t pick them first for dodgeball.
If you mean “why Blizz implemented penalties”, Ion explained it during the beta. Basically, their idea with Covenants is that they’d become part of your character’s identity and both tying player power to them and making switching painful is their way of trying to force us to care about them.
2 Likes
I think you had a typo, you must have meant to say you have completely removed betrayer status.
1 Like
Please pull the ripcord. I legitimately do not enjoy these restrictions. I only have the time to play one character. I just want to enjoy the whole story and play with all the powers under one hood. I just want to have fun with all my specs. I beg you please let us just be free of the restrictions.
12 Likes
On paper, covenants sound great. Honestly. But in practice, and because of people seeking meta means that we choose to be inferior if we don’t follow the meta.
Maybe there are undiscovered viable choices within all covenants, but I’m sure the number crunchers saw through that illusion quickly
2 Likes
I was mostly asking from a story perspective, yeah.
I know their reasoning behind why they went this route, but unfortunately I don’t think they realized the consequences of attaching player power to it. They had a pretty cool system with covenants in terms of things to do, rewards to chase, and stories to follow but I’m guessing they were terrified nobody would actually engage with it unless they forced power into it. I really enjoy everything about the covenants all the way up until you get to the player power; but that problem is so pervasive it makes me hate the whole thing.
In fact, it makes me feel even less interested in pursing covenant goals because I know at any moment I might be compelled to switch because someone with poor math skills hotfixed in a few balance changes.
Even if they “pulled the ripcord” it doesn’t actually solve the fundamental problems with the current implementation of covenants, it just means people can actually diversify. Really what they should do is completely detach soulbinds and the abilities from covenant choice and bake it into its own system if we absolutely have to stick with this borrowed power nonsense.
But obviously at this point that’s wishful thinking. The last time Blizzard started implementing a bunch of rapid-fire changes in response to feedback dating over a year back, it was literally the week after lockdown began so I’m guessing they had time to log into their game for once and realized their ideas they kept incessantly defending were actually bad.
4 Likes
Forcing people who aren’t lucky enough to have their preferred Covenant be the best one (whether for overall power or more fun abilities) to pick between gameplay and story was always stupid. Player power was tied to covenants because people want what’s best, not in spite of it. It was an intentional decision on their part, not an “oopsies we didn’t think of that”.
What they should’ve done is split the decisions. Let people pick the abilities they want and then have them change thematically to fit the Covenant choice. For example, if you wanted the NF abilities but preferred the Necrolords theme you could choose both and your Soulshape would turn you into a zombie dog instead of a fox.
12 Likes
That’s the original sin of this expansion. There’s nothing they could have done to make me care about it because this isn’t WoW. It’s not Azeroth. It’s not Outland/Draenor. It’s not even the Twisting Nether. From the moment news of it first leaked I knew Shadowlands would be a disaster of an expansion because it simply doesn’t feel like WoW. As far as I am concerned this silly fairytale take on the afterlife can’t end soon enough. And in fact the sooner it’s dead and buried the better before they end up retconning even more of the lore than they already have and made a mess of things even further. They tried something new and it failed. Time to let it go.
The story comes first. Everything else is secondary to me. And frankly there isn’t much else anyway because when you take away the story all that’s left is the stupid expansion specific systems inside of systems inside of systems. That’s how it’s been for years now.
3 Likes
Stop piece-mealing these damn solutions to self-imposed complexity for God knows what reason.
Obviously from a code perspective, there is a way to basically switch covenants without penalty. Let it go and stop penalizing players and micromanaging every bloody thing we do.
This is not a bloody Korean MMO so let’s keep it that way.
7 Likes
Those are the worst kind of changes imo.
They show that the devs aknowledge the problem they created and at the same time are too stubborn to give in.
This betrayal thing should never exist in the first place. You begin the story rebuilding the covenant from the ground, you decide to help another and then you’re the great betrayer that they can’t even look in the eye so you have to regain their trust when you could’ve let them rot.
Is doesn’t make sense even from the story perspective. Everybody knows it’s there just for the metrics.
13 Likes
#PULLTHERIPCORD
This is absurd. We’ve been saying so since alpha if not blizzcon. Every single systems idea in this expansion should have gone straight in the chipper
Blizzard, you need to undo all this damage ASAP.
None of this is fun. I dont want all these SYSTEMS standing between me and PLAYING the game. Because this isn’t play. It’s not fun. Let us raid, do PVP, and quest a great storyline and GO back to systems somewhere between vanilla and early wrath. You’ve made everything so
…terrible. Just give us our old core systems back and keep things fresh with stuff we’ve actually been asking for, like DYES for gear and HOUSING and let more races play more of the classes.
2 Likes
Blizzard wanted there to be more RPGsh elements to WoW, but their mistake was tying character power to it.
Covs would be very well received if it was just mogs and their side HQ stuff having no impact on character power.
3 Likes
It always feels like a we get what we want for a year then give them what they want for the other half of exp.
2 Likes
Korean mmos almost feel better at this point, though
1 Like
*for the last 2 months before end of the expansion. We hardly ever get a satisfactory, fun version of a given expansion, and when we do, it’s a free for all afterthought before the next pre patch
2 Likes
Kyrian IS the best covenant this is insulting you don’t want Kyrian for PvE
1 Like
Louder for the kids in the back.
I couldnt agree more. If this is what the cosmic war looks like the idea needs to be abandoned. Azeroth is the world of warcraft, period.
1 Like