And if you noticed, that was mostly in the Sylvanas threads.
Oh, of course… because my viewpoint isn’t the same as yours, I must certainly be raging uncontrollably. 
Or how about we give our feedback, let Blizz decide and hopefully not have another trash expansion that loses more people?
You claim they listen to us and give us the wrong things. Let’s see how that goes with this, shall we?
How are they punished for playing the covenant they like? They get to play the covenant they like lol.
Seems like a win to me.
If players are daft enough to choose a covenant/faction they dislike simply because it does 70 theoretical dps more when played to perfection well that’s on them isn’t it lol.
They lose dps. As you just said, it isn’t meaningful if it doesn’t punish someone for making the wrong decision.
That’s not going to be what it’s like. If Azerite, Corruption, or Essences are anything to learn from, it’s going to matter a lot.
now we gonna have 4 questline to play (1/4 storyline content for 1 toon player) and endless(?) tower run like sword art online??
I am ok with daily bonus worldquest when you can do 4 WQ a day or 12 WQ and relax for 2 days
but daily is poo poo, punish you everyday that you take a day off
70 dps matters only to a computer and only when there are zero mechanics.
So unless you are botting it isn’t an issue right?
Also I never used the term punished in that instance. There is a difference between always having a right answer and having no wrong answers.
Sure because you are part of Blizzard and have first hand knowledge?
Corruption is an RNG item system not even anything to do with talents and abilities. Essences are available to everyone so you have choice, and same with Azerite.
None of those are remotely similar to a choice between 4 talents.
What do you mean “wrong one”?
Look at World of Warcraft Classic. If you are not a human warrior, you are wrong if you want to min/max. These covenant abilities. Are they going to make anyone not be able to complete content? No. Are they going to prevent you from getting a high arena rating? No.
These abilities, some of which have flavor to their assigned covenant, are providing you with choice.
Right now, the min/maxers are complaining that they have to make a choice. If they can’t get their choice of ascetics and best ability, they’re complaining. But let’s be honest here…
Min/maxers, the folks complaining about not being able to complete stuff if they don’t get access to all the abilities to rotate around, NEVER had a choice. They all follow the same formula that is spit out by a sim program.
Is it really that bad that Blizzard wants you to make a choice?
I’ll gladly never earn a single aesthetic reward from covenants if it means I can change my covenant for the relevant power increases in a given area of content.
You make me choose between mechanics and aesthetics I’ll choose mechanics every time. There I made a choice.
But this depends on what your composition is and how your team is planning the dungeon.
Players will have to think and work together to figure out what CHOICE will be best for every piece of content and situation.
That’s a GREAT thing to have in a game. Locking players down needlessly impedes and punishes players that would like to mix things up and work together or heck, even just experiment with different abilities.
One thing to bear in mind is how poor blizzard has been in the past balancing things…
How are we going to feel when we pick the covenant with the ‘best’ ability, work our way through whatever hoops they have and then next tier it gets nerfed, or another gets buffed. Or the player is required to change the main spec and the current ability is no good for it. and the player feels forced to ‘grind’ a new covenant to stay on par.
We see these things happen more often than not over the last few expansions, how many times have we seen people not getting into groups because of low level essences, bad legendaries, etc.
Next expansion it’ll be “I got kicked for being in the wrong covenant”
Simply put, flavour abilities and thematic abilities, like the movement buff are cool to be covenant locked.
Combat abilities should just be a new talent tier.
Sorry, I simply can’t agree with the idea that WoW’s idea of “player agency” should involve punishing players that want to change their mind about a decision. And it is punishment, because it’s not going to be difficult to change your covenant. It’s not going to be fun to change your covenant. It’s just going to take up so, so, SO MUCH of your TIME.
I mean, let’s be real, man. Blizzard are sticking to their guns on this one because they want us to grind out reputation for weeks, and keep us paying that subscription fee. It has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with respectful game design, player agency, or “meaningful choices.” I’ll NEVER believe that sort of garbage.
Don’t kid yourself.
While I agree with OP from what they have said about them so far I also think its too far out to really say for sure what its going to be. I guess it is important for BLizzard to take in some feedback from players since there should still be time to make changes before release.
RIP Shadowlands, dead on arrival
If you aren’t this covenant, you’re nothing
They need to just rework all the classes so things are right to begin with. I don’t really care for the covenant system. It just homogenizes everything and feels like a bandaid solution to balancing.