Blizzard is quintupling down on the system. They remind me of self-destructive people doing more and more of the thing they know is bad.
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It would have been alright if they would have made each ability available to each covenant (with each covenants own twist in the name and aesthetics of the ability.) it’s really only going to come down to which ever covenant Icy Veins or any other theory crafter deems best for each patch cycle.
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Okay, well since you’ve shown your credentials, I guess you’re allowed to have an opinion.
It’s absolutely maddening because out of this and the continued war on flying shadowlands looks to be mop tier. Like they are even remaking the boring raid bosses yet they are going to screw up everything by digging in their heels.
Yes, it really is maddening. Very frustrating to watch.
I have to wonder if the “it’s fine, everything is great, it’ll be balanced and everyone will be happy” folks or the “only the very top 0.001% of players will care about this” folks have read any of https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/covenants-and-your-spec-a-survey/616438/.
Post after post, from every spec/class, fall into one of several categories:
- X is the obvious choice; everything else feels awful or doesn’t interact with the spec at all.
- None of these abilities are interesting or useful to me in most/all of the content I enjoy.
- X feels great but it’s obviously overtuned and will be nerfed to oblivion a week after launch.
- X is great for my main spec but useless for my offspec
And so on.
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Of course they haven’t.
No-one whose actually thought about it and looked into Covenants, both from a feedback and numerical/design PoV has come to the conclusion that they’re fine.
The people who think they’re fine either:
- Haven’t actually bothered looking into the system, nor care to remember Blizzards history on balancing these kind of systems.
- Don’t actually care about the downsides, for a TON of people in this category, those downsides are the point. They support the Covenant system purely out of spite.
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Being charitable, I think there’s a third option: they might play just one class/spec and it happens to be one where the choices are actually pretty balanced, so they assume that’s the case for everyone else too.
A decent handful of them have stated outright that a lot of the draw is that it punishes min/maxers.
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The weird thing is, the actual top players probably don’t care that much. They’ll take whatever is strongest for the content they prefer, without any regard for aesthetics or story. If they need three covenants for various encounters or modes of play, they’ll roll three identical characters and you (mostly) won’t see them here complaining about it.
I found a very good thread and feedback from a customer that has tried the new expansion systems.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/thank-you-for-showing-me-shadowlands/620261
This is valid feedback and just reinforces in my mind we will see many, many similar posts like these in the coming months and the next six months IMVHO.
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100 hash brown blessed hash brown no filter Starbucks TTYL the Gucci store 100 lit
I am trying out my hip new internet slang, is it any good?
It’s my opinion that the only way to create a meaningful choice in a game like World of Warcraft is to tie it to different kinds of power available. The aesthetics, the story, it’s all icing. The real choice is in what kind of way you want to play, what sort of abilities do you want, what kind of content do you care about doing most. Covenants may not be perfect, but I think this is a great step in the direction I want the game to go.
No. Here is an easier way to understand what needs to be done to save systemlands.
Just pull the ripcord and watch the heavens part and angels come down to sign to us all. Have a blessed day.
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I like to pull my ripcords while I am eating bacon!
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Serious question for you: are talents not meaningful? Are specs? What about gear, essences? Trinkets?
Do any of these things not have meaningful ramifications?
What I’m getting at is: why does a choice have to be permanent for it to be meaningful? Meaningful to me is that I’m making a conscious choice with drawbacks and benefits in mind. If at a later point I choose to take different benefits with different drawbacks, what exactly isn’t meaningful about this choice? I am literally engaging with the game, theorizing about how I interact with it, experiment with my options available.
If Blizzard wants more permanent choices in this game, it needs to be more than just a covenant. We aren’t playing Dragon Age or Baldur’s Gate. Those are games where your choices directly effect the outcome of the ending. This is an MMO, there is no ending (yet,) and we’re playing with other people. All I’m seeing from Covenants is Blizzard wanting its cake and eating it too. They made the conscious choice to make WoW a multiplayer game, they have to live with that choice.
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That’s just option one.
I think they’ll care. Just because that’s something they’d do, doesn’t mean they’ll enjoy it.
Top players grinded IE’s for days on end to pump their neck up because that’s what you had to do to be competitive at that level in BFA, but it was hardly the most popular task.
Pull it.
Save Shadowlands.
That is fine as well.
Just that BlizZard needs to pull that ripcord. If they have to eat bacon and pancakes to accomplish that so be it! 
Get.It.Done.
PULLtheRIPcord.
I kinda agree with you most of the time but man, what’s with the and in everything you post?