Sorry you can’t follow.
What puzzles me is why players are being required to ‘join’ one Covenant at all. Have we ever been put in this situation before, where we must make a single choice that is so defining and important, other than which faction our character is in?
Why put people into a position which has all the appeal of putting on a straightjacket? Imagine if, back in Legion, we had to choose whether to sign up on the side of the Highmountain Tauren or the Nightfallen or the Wardens, and doing that had a + or - for your character. We weren’t asked to make that choice, we were asked to support all the peoples of the Broken Isles and gain their trust.
What should have been down for the Covenants is something similar; we quest and do activities that grow Renown (really just another name for reputation) with a Covenant that offers a separate set of talents, but that what we can also work on all the others as well to gain access to those sets of talents, and have an ability, by talking to an NPC, to swap to that particular Covenant talent set. It would not mean we were “betraying” that Covenant, since we had already gained their respect. We would simply be adapting our character to do the work of all the Covenants in the Shadowlands.
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So what are they losing?
What is lost by opening up covenants to freely switch?
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SOMEONE losing weight in their choice or whatever reason you’ll end up writing off anyway.
Nothing is lost.
Here’s the take of a self-proclaimed “RP/Casual”:
You can’t name any specifics because you, too, know that there’s no good reason why Covenants should be so heavily restrictive.
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Because of the reason I listed. It’s why both our reasons become null’ n void.
You didn’t list any reasons whatsoever.
That “Meaningful Choice” fallacy has been debunked by literal hundreds upon hundreds of players across dozens of forum posts.
There’s no such thing as a “meaningful choice” when the only choices to be made are correct and incorrect ones in the grand scheme of things.
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And you give a reasonable retort. Don’t let me laugh, if you are going to challenge a persons immersion or reason, at least give a shroud of backing and logic in your stupid presentation.
What is lost? Meaningful choice, the ability to create builds for your character.
Here’s what I mean. Think back to vanilla WoW (Classic WoW if you weren’t around back then). Talent trees existed and it was annoying to respec, both in terms of gold price and having to assign all your talent points over and over again (and just hope you didn’t misclick), so players created builds, these builds were investments, they made you good at some things, and bad at others. People could change them, but they often didn’t because of just how annoying the process was.
You had to choose what spec you were going to focus on, and you could choose a key talent, and create a talent build around that particular key ability (for example, you could, as a paladin, create a build around the talent ‘reckoning’ and drop the dreaded ‘reck bomb’ in PVP)
Talents being freely swappable removed ‘builds’ from the game. You had more freedom to choose, but with that came an expectation that if you didn’t pick the best talent, you were gimping yourself. That’s how it was in MoP, WoD and Legion. Pick the best talents, no need to worry about a build.
BFA however brought back the concept of builds, thanks to Azerite traits. You could get a trait on your gear, such as Primal Primer for enhancement shamans, and if you had that trait you could build around that and you would take talents that you otherwise wouldn’t. For example, the first row of talents has Boulderfist, Hot Hand and Lightning Shield, and without any azerite traits, Lightning Shield is the go to talent.
But if you have the Primal Primer azerite trait, and you want to build around that. Then instead of taking Lightning Shield, you want to take Hot Hand, and there are other talent variations in place as well. A primal primer build is very different from a standard enhancement shaman build.
This concept of builds and choice is coming into play in Shadowlands as well. Only instead of creating a build around an azerite trait, you’re creating a build around a covenant choice and conduit selection. You’ll want to pick talents and conduits which synergize with your covenant abilities and make you a better Kyrian Mage, or a Necrolord Mage, or a Venthyr Mage etc.
You make covenant abilities and conduits freely swappable, and you remove the concept of builds and we return to the MoP, WoD, Legion gameplay cycle, where you’re expected to pick the best FOTM covenant ability for whatever content you’re trying to do, same with conduit choice. Take the best, or GTFO.
LOL. Gold wasn’t an issue on respeccing.
And your whole thing about making builds would be IMPROVED with swappable covenant abilities.
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Why wouldn’t I want to let you laugh? Laughing is good, it releases stress, laugh away my friend.
Let’s make covenants like classic, then. 50g to swap covenants, you drive a tough bargain but I’m in. Let’s do it.
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They already have the ability to swap covenants in the game, swapping from Necrolords to Kyrian has no penalty, you just need to click through some dialogue options. Going from Kyrian back to Necrolords requires you to complete a quest to prove your worth.
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Meaning is subjective, the lore behind locking covenants doesn’t even make sense with the story, and locking covenants is what stops us from testing and creating builds so that’s wrong. Azerite worked eventually because we had access to more options and it sucked when we had less. Locked covenants is the equivalent of less options.
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Can I prove my worth with 50 gold? Just like vanilla!
Because I’m having to read your garbage.
Man, let’s bury the hatchet. No need to get in each others’ faces. You hate flexibility, i love it. Doesn’t mean we can’t get along. You hold too much anger in your heart, it isnt healthy. Cmere big guy, let’s kiss and make up. 
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Classic exists right now and the gold isn’t even remotely an issue nowadays. At all.
There are few if any actual “builds” anyway. Marksmanship is the only instance of one of these and it would still probably take all the talents it currently takes.
Take it from someone who’s actually on the beta and has actually tested a lot of this stuff out: these things are just as much of an issue as everybody excepts them to be.
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Reported…