How does one join this community?
-not a cop
one small fix that should have done before this expansion went live…
nothing on sight to even remove renown, this isnt going to make me go back to log on retail since that week you launched SoD… fix your systems or better remove them, you could learn a thing or two since now you’re opening older expansions.
Hoping this falls under the “Class and talent changes” part but might be wishful thinking.
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It’s all good stuff, but I refuse to congratulate you for listening to us. You want a pat on the back for that? Invent a time machine, travel back a year, and tell the developers to do all this BEFORE the game launches rather than as a mid expansion band aid.
And why the salt?
Because you keep doing this. You keep introducing systems you have no hope of balancing, which fight against us, which waste our time, which offer horrible grinds and then you fight us as much as you can in changing them until as close to the end of the expansion as possible and THEN, THEN you fix them only to toss it all out in the trash with the next expansion and to begin repeating the cycle.
The only reason these changes are coming now is nothing to do with the lore, or the narrative, or how impactful the Covenant system was at the beginning. It’s because millions of players have voted with their feet and they’ve left and this is an attempt to show you are capable of listening. Which this does, you are indeed capable of listening.
When your backs are against the wall and you are bleeding subscribers faster than you’d like.
So I will take these changes. I will even acknowledge that they are good changes. But I won’t thank you for them because these should have been in place since launch and it was the arrogance of the dev team which blinded them to the fact that what they were introducing was going to end up in a horrible mess.
You want plaudits? You want thanks? You want the adulation of your community? Then take this as a lesson learned and apply it to 10.0. If whatever expansion comes next doesn’t require a mid expansion dismantling of your failed systems as Shadowlands AND Battle for Azeroth have both done, THEN you’ll get some thanks because you’ll have done something.
I will not gush over someone cleaning up the mess they made when they were told repeatedly not to go and make that mess and they arrogantly went ahead anyway.
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It took more than a year to see that you people were wrong all along?
Sorry, but there are so many things wrong with the game that they just took any joy of the game out of me, my subscription is probably also going to expire before this patch comes, so, yeah… I will probably not renew it.
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I can’t help but smile. It only took two lawsuits, a year of gatekeeping most of the quest content, and losing most of their content creators to start reading their social media again!
I am looking forward to the road ahead for the first time since Legion. Thanks for… actually posting. Try not to become so arrogant again, it almost broke your game for your only remaining customers. First in a huge amount of steps to build a modicum of trust back with us.
I’ll never forget the great migration of devs to Twitter because blues were getting personally offended. Taking flack and harassment is unfortunately just a part of being a CM or game developer, and it will follow you to any platform. You have to learn how to find the people that are worth listening to, and keep your finger on their pulse.
Learning to find the constructive criticism, now that’s the way. I’m extremely skeptical, but remotely hopeful for the future of the game.
Constructive crit on OP:
Acting like you made a good choice in locking the covenants in the first place was a mistake. The overwhelming majority of feedback disagrees with you, no need to tuck tail. If you’re going to eat crow, just go the whole nine.
Half-measures look and feel bad to us. Just because internally you think something is a good idea doesn’t mean we do. Silent majority mentalities do not work. Just fully admit to design flaws.
Thanks for not being afraid to talk to us and try to do your job which is, in part, ignoring useless attacks and finding good feedback–and actually responding to it.
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I don’t know at this point if you guys really believe this or you’re just forced into acting this way because you can’t publicly be like “haha yeah you guys were right sorry about that” but just in case its the former just here to let you know i have legitimately NEVER appreciated the game more because it made me choose my covenant or limited my conduit changing abilities.
I’d guess for most players whatever positive new player or immersion rp experience that you were trying to create with these restrictions had 0 positive impact on their shadowlands experience and saying you’re changing it because the benefits have dulled makes me actually feel like a company is gas lighting thier community.
Thanks I guess but its like you guys are saying “This vase shouldn’t be balanced on a large rubber ball, it should be on a sturdy table! Let’s put it in its proper place now that there is no longer any benefit to balancing it on a yoga ball” but the vase has already shattered on the ground.
All of this.
Look no further than warlocks, over 95% of the class players went Nightfae because it’s the uncontested best for all three specs with the second runner up (Necro) being only even passable in one of the specs while still significantly worse.
Then there’s mages where your covenant actually mandates which spec you are to the point that 97+% of them were arcane/Kyrian, Fire/Nightfae, Venthyr/Frost with barely any players straying from that model.
If your spec didn’t mandate your covenant, your covenant absolutely mandated your spec.
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Considering this same exact thing happened in Legion and then BFA what do you think?
When it comes to the limitations on Covenant-switching, millions of players experienced Shadowlands for the first time through the lens of their Covenant of choice, and that would have not been possible had the choice carried less weight from the outset. Nevertheless, after the conclusion of the Chains of Domination campaign, the Covenants are united against the Jailer, and revisiting player feedback in that context has led us to re-evaluate our approach.
This still seems to have an air of arrogance around it. A lot of people knew, and you should have known as designers, that tying an aesthetic heavy game such as a MMO to major player power choices, was wrong. This line makes everything very disappointing, as if you are just going to make the very same mistakes again in the future and refuse to flat out admit it was a complete mistake.
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I get that you “blizzard” have an idea for the game. You have a vision how you want to play it, but it really hurts when your community is against something in beta, and your like naaaaaa. Theeeeen at the end of the xpac or the middle we get this QoL changes, and its jeeeee those would be great earlier.
Yeah refusing to admit covenant locking was a bad idea was a pretty sad choice. Overall, great changes, but sticking to a false narrative created internally is pretty cringe.
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Because then they wouldn’t have anything to give us for the usual mid expansion sub drop .
You know like Legion Legendary vendors or BfA Corruption Vendors .
Took a year apparently for you guys to read the beta feedback but ok there was covid i can accept that
I have to agree with some of the comments here. It really is a little too late and the changes being made are changes that should have been made long ago or never taken out of the game in the first place. After years of not listening to your player base, it takes sexual assault/harassment allegations, the death of an employee, a mass firing, and an employee uprising for Blizzard to finally take its player base seriously.
If you’re going to continue putting things back into the game, then bring back the talent tree system. The system in the game now is utter garbage and lazy. It would also be nice if you guys get some new writers. Blizzards story telling methods for the last couple expansions are the same. There’s nothing new or unique. Legion was a wondrous expansion, but you killed all that effort with BofA. The game needs new classes as well, and Hero Classes. Stop jerking around and make it happen.
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The system simply has not played out the way we hoped it would. We should have heeded community feedback and taken a different direction a year ago.
So…you thought you did, but you didn’t 
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Nope.
This is a pathetic response time.
Warcraft has been on fire for months and house has already burnt down to ashes at this point.
What’s there left to salvage?
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Can we get the old Shadowform back
Make PVP gearing for alts less miserable please! It’s so demoralizing trying to que on a character with 20-30k HP and everyone even at 1200 mmr or random BGs has 40-50k+
I’m happy you’re making lower ilvl pvp gear scale better, which is amazing. This however still doesn’t address the fact it can take 2+ weeks of grinding daily to even reach this level of honor gear.
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So, devil’s advocate here. They knew from the start that they were going to do this, and the proof is how the system is gated, and the words they omitted in this update.
Even if we can switch covenants, it doesn’t matter since the progress is going to be unique per covenant, and the weekly Maw soul quest is going to still timegate our progress. They planned this from the start, to fix any dwindling subscription numbers since we have to waste time waiting to collect 20 souls per week, max.
This is not the ripcord that Ion hates for some reason. The ripcord was not gating the abilities, not just the covenants.