I want to draw everyone’s attention to the Covenant system in the next Shadowlands expansion. I am concerned that there is a dire threat to everyone’s enjoyment of the game, on a level that is worse than the much maligned Azerite system in BfA. I’ve seen a few people talk about this before but without much depth. I’ll give a rundown of what we know about the Covenant system, why it’s exciting, and also why it could ruin the game for many players.
What are Covenants?
In Shadowlands, we’ll experience a significant portion of the story though the Covenants that exist there. Through the first time in Shadowlands content, you’ll be introduced to each Covenant and have a chance to sample their style, environments, story and abilities before making a choice to stick with one for the rest of the expansion. The story content will fill a similar role as the war campaign in BfA - A long side story that is told over multiple patches. There are four Covenants to choose from, and choosing one will lock you out of the story from the others. The four Covenants are as follows:
Bastion - Kyrians
Maldraxxus - Necrolords
Ardenweald - Night Fae
Revendreth - Venthyr
Each one has an interesting theme, zone, story and city. You can read more of their story and design on Wowhead.
The choice of Covenant isn’t completely permanent. According to Ion Hazzikostas :
You may change your Covenant but it won’t be quite that easy. As far as the effort to do so goes, think of the Aldor and the Scryers back in TBC. Covenants aren’t something to be switched around lightly.
Why are Covenants cool?
When you join forces with a Covenant, you gain access to a bunch of cool things that are unique to each faction. You’ll get a new ability that is specific to your class, a new covenant specific movement ability, access to their home city/story/quests/vendors, unique appearances, pets, mounts and a mysterious Soulbind system that gives passive bonuses based on which member of the faction you bind with. It actually sounds pretty cool to me on paper.
So what’s the problem, exactly?
- 4 Stories, 4 Characters Oh boy. So, let’s tackle this first one real quick: You’re going to need to play 4 different characters at max level to see the entire Shadowlands story. And that’s… I mean that could be really rough for some players. I know many people only play one character but really enjoy experiencing the story. For me, this isn’t a big deal. I played through all 12 of the Legion campaigns and both of the war campaigns. I find that kind of thing interesting. It may be possible that upon completing a Covenant story, you could switch to the others to experience them. This could be a good solution but if it’s too difficult, many players could be unhappy. This kind of thing needs some time to shake out. Not a big deal for me, but could be for others.
- Appearance restrictions Some players love being able to change their character appearance. The transmog system is hugely popular and restrictions on the system tend to draw player ire. Now, on one hand it’s cool to have unique appearances and such. My Alliance and Horde, or Plate and Leather characters can look different and distinct from each other. I enjoyed unlocking appearances on one character to use on another. I can also see how player fantasy would play a part of this. My druid will likely join with the night fea and chill with my nature bros, and that’s cool. But that means my hunter would be a waste to join with them when I could be unlocking something new with the Necrolords, even if that doesn’t fit her “theme”. I’m not thrilled with this, but I could give it a pass.
- It’s hard to change your choice Here, in the expansion where we want player agency to matter, we also present players with a choice, a choice that has consequences and significance. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the only reason it has those consequences is because it won’t be easy to switch. Would they not still have significance if it was easy to switch? You would still be participating with the group of your choice, it’s just that that choice wasn’t the end all, be all of the game. What if players regret their choice? What if they regret their choice multiple times? Why does it need to be punishing? This is high on my Shadowlands watch list. I already made a big choice when I chose faction, race, server and class and some of those still have consequences to this day. I don’t need more choices that I could regret. I don’t like this and I think it may be a negative experience for many players.
- Abilities and Soulbinds This is absolutely insane. I’m going to hold back here because we haven’t seen this system in its entirety, but I’ve gotta punch this down before it becomes The Shadowlands Problem . The gloves will come off if this ever sees the light of day. On one hand, they’re asking players which theme, story and appearances they’d like to immerse themselves in. On the other hand, they’re making players decide what abilities/passives they have to use.
The Shadowlands Problem: Azerite Redux
As someone who plays a lot of Druid in WoW, I’ve had a unique perspective on a lot of the choices WoW presents, moreso than the other classes I’ve played. Druids have 4 talent trees, so they can fill any role. At one point they could fill two roles in the same spec! With this came gear collection, and my druid always had the full bag problem. When Azerite came around, I ran into a problem: I had more roles than I had spare pieces of Azerite gear. I had to pay to respec my Azerite, with an exponential gold cost per piece. What. the. heck. This was obviously mitigated by picking up more Azerite gear, but this gear trickled in slowly and couldn’t keep pace with my hunger for relevant gear for each spec. This isn’t something that affected the other classes I played nearly as much, but I still viewed it as a big problem. Thank god I didn’t have to level my necklace separately and find extremely rare legendaries for each spec like in Legion (but at least I had FUN in Legion).
With Covenant abilities, we’re about to slam against a big wall of unfun design. Here’s the Covenant specific utility abilities:
Kyrian - Unburden : Dissolve into pure anima, increasing your movement speed to 300%, slowing your falling speed, and propelling you forward for 4 sec. Greatly reduces the radius at which enemies will detect you.
Necrolord - Transcend the Flesh : Separate your soul from your body for 20 sec. Your soul is invisible and untargetable, though your body remains vulnerable. This effect will end early if you move further than 60 yds from your body. When Transcend the Flesh ends or is cancelled, your body rejoins with your soul.
Night Fae - Soulshape : Turn into a Spirit Fox, increasing your movement speed by 30% and causing enemies to ignore you. Lasts 10 sec, or until cancelled while in a rest area.
Venthyr - Door of Shadows : Wend through the shadows, appearing at the targeted location.
This seems targeted against the usage of Shroud of Concealment by rogues in M+ dungeons. Now everyone has a trash skipping ability! But are these balanced against each other? Does a Demon Hunter get to skip farther as a Necrolord? Consider a theoretical group with a Mage, Rogue, Druid and DH tank. The first 3 can skip quite a few M+ packs by themselves but can’t do it without the DH. Now the Necrolord DH can combine his ability with Fel Leap and get a significant amount of distance without pulling anything. If that turns out to be a huge advantage in M+ in Shadowlands, you’d be crazy to bring a non-Necrolord DH tank to your group. This ultimately devolves into asking players what Covenant they are with, much like asking for their specialization. For many classes, their specs are easy to change. What about differences between specs as well? Maybe Vengeance works better with Necrolord but Havok works best with Kyrian. Now a player who plays both specs will have to make a suboptimal choice for one of his specs. With the clarification that Covenants are not easy to change, I’m worried that Blizzard is building an unbalanced system locked behind a hard choice.
And what of the class abilities? We haven’t seen them all, so the impact of this is not as clear. We have a list of all Kyrian abilities for all classes, and we have all Mage abilities for all Covenants. Let’s look at the Mage choices:
- Kyrian — Radiant Spark : Conjure a radiant spark that causes 4,854 Arcane damage instantly, and an additional 1,892 damage over 8 sec. Your next 4 direct damage abilities that hit targets affected by Radiant Spark deal 25% increased damage, up to 100% increased damage. (30 sec cooldown)
- Night Fae — Shifting Power : Draw from the ground beneath you for 3 seconds, dealing 5,500 Nature damage to nearby enemies over the duration. Every second spent channeling increases your Haste by 5% for 15 seconds. (45 sec cooldown)
- Necrolord — Contagion Bolt : Deal 5,000 Shadow damage to the target enemy. For the next 8 seconds, your single target spells cast on the affected enemy cause the disease to splash to nearby enemies dealing 3,000 Shadow damage. (1.5 min cooldown)
- Venthyr — Mirrors of Torment : Conjure 3 mirrors that rotate around the targeted enemy for 6 seconds. Whenever they cast an ability or spell they take 7,000 Shadow damage and are rooted for 1.5 seconds (2 min cooldown)
Mages have a choice between a single target spell, aoe spell, a pbaoe spell with a buff, and a single target CC/damage spell. The last one only seems useful in PvP, as you can’t exactly time or rely on PvE mobs to cast spells or abilities with frequency and roots typically don’t work on them. So already, I don’t want Venthyr Mages in my PvE groups when I could have a Kyrian Mage. Opposite for PvP. What kind of choice is that for a Mage? Heck, if my Mage is specced for Glacial Spike, my choice is made up for me with Radiant Spark. And I wouldn’t dare pick Shifting Power in a M+ dungeon. What if I’m NOT specced into or choose to spec out of Glacial Spike one day? Now maybe some other ability is better, so I feel locked into Glacial Spike!!
It’s almost like these abilities have the power levels of talents, yet require near-hardlocked choice. That’s not cool. Talents are very easy to change, so why aren’t these?
Let’s glance over at Kyrian abilities:
- Purity’s Vale : Fill the target area with anima for 16 sec. Within the vale your Intellect and Stamina are increased by 20%, and you gain X every 4 sec.
- Balance : Solar Empowerment
- Feral : Clearcasting
- Restoration : Clearcasting
- Guardian: Gore]
- 18 yd range, Instant, 2 minute cooldown
My Druid may end up Kyrian for whatever reason, but now look at this: Their Kyrian ability does something different for each spec. My Feral Druid is already overloaded with resources, I don’t think I could possibly fit more Clearcasting procs in there. But maybe that Solar Empowerment is really good for Balance? My Resto spec would enjoy the dash from Kyrians, but my Feral eyes the Door of Shadows. Do I have to roll a new Druid for every spec I want to play?! This is an incredible level of insanity on a level that Azerite couldn’t even touch.
And this is analysis coming from someone who is now a mostly casual player. I already hate this design, can you imagine what will happen at the high end? Realigning your Covenant three-five times a week to fit your PvP, Mythic Raid and M+ needs? And it’s not something you can simply throw gold at?
The only way forward is to unlink Covenant choice from these abilities, or disable them in instances. Having these abilities only in the open world reduces their importance in competitive content and I think many players would tolerate a slightly subpar ability if it only affected world content at worst. I am concerned that if Blizzard fails to address this soon enough, many players are going to be very upset with how this system affects their gameplay.