everyone lets remember a few things.
just about everyone on the r/wow subreddit want blizz to #pulltheripcord
i’ve seen ffxiv laughing big time about this system and most of my friends who play ffxiv think they will be getting a ton of new players post-systemlands.
even the tortanic the worst mmo in the world wouldn’t do a system like this.
really I’m guessing about 80% of the community want blizz to pull it. and i’m guessing a good chunk of those people will leave if blizz doesn’t. and even if they do in a later patch? remember don’t forgive or forget.
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And we’ll continue posting our displeasure about it.
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Some of us are perfectly capable of disliking this system without someone telling us to not like it…
I’ve yet to see one good logical argument as to why being covenant locked is a good thing.
Are you familiar with irony? Well…
I’ll say it for the umpteenth time. There’s absolutely 100% no logical reason covenants shouldn’t be freely swappable. None.
We have to really decide as a community what we want WoW to be, or we need to screw off and let Blizzard to their thing.
Covenants being a choice is Blizzard trying to add RPG back into the MMORPG. Do we care about being totally engrossed with our characters and the choices we make for them? Or do we just want to be as effective as possible and allow talents/spells to be pointless because we just wanna switch them all the time?
Vanilla/BC/Wrath is the closest many players have had to maintaining class identity. Especially in the Early days, the majority of players would select their talent points they wanted to with not much room for respecing (gold was hard to come by and dual talent spec was super expensive) without the use of guides that have done the math to determine the most meta build possible.
If you feel like WoW lacks any soul, it’s truly because none of the choices you make are ever impactful because you can just change your mind at any given moment.
And of you’re worried about not getting into a m+ group, I highly suggest you just start running your own groups instead of having a victim complex and acting like its impossible to find a group.
Those reasons will vary from person to person. Some just like making other people be miserable. Others like the idea of locked abilities because it better fits into how they feel the game should be played. More yet might just be tired of all the people crying for the unlock so they decided to oppose it because it’s something different. We will never know all the reasons people might oppose the unlock.
For me personally, I like Blizzard trying something different. Listening to the players over the years is what has made retail what it is. Everything we now like to complain about in retail were things players asked for. For once Blizzard is saying ‘feedback be damned’ and are going forward with an idea they and pretty much they alone feel is a good design. I am hoping for the best but at least we know if they still are struggling with it in 9.3 we have a way out.
Yea I can see that that could happen. I would expect that there are a few groups of people that most fall into.
- The players such as myself who like to min max and push content. For us the ability/expectation of swapping is what we enjoy so it works for us.
- Semi casual/hardcore. Players who look up a basic guide and try to do well but they are not going to re watch 3 hours of raid after raiding. For them it doesn’t matter if they use the best or not. They don’t bother to keep upto date with the latest corruptions etc so this is no different.
- Full casual. Don’t look up guides just plays the game. They won’t even know which is best. So they get to play with whatever they want.
To me there are no loses there. Perhaps the only ones would be some in group 2 who are bordering group 1. They may be push into swapping in order to perform better but the same would happen if covenants were locked.
In the video with preach ion said the idea was that by making it perminant people wouldn’t be a picky.
He then uses class ad an example of a perminant choice.
Raise your hand if you have seen lfg with a specific class name 
. Lf rogue.
Those were his own examples lol. He has immediately debunked his own theory on perminant choices not being discriminated against.
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Seems super tedious. Surely if they have a ripcord option it isn’t as dumb as just free and open swapping.
If they tie the abilities to the soulbinds and then make it so the soulbinds are not dependant on your covenant it would be a lot less menu BS and your RP and transmog would stay largely the same.
i.e. Pelagos is still my bud even though I’m a venthyr
Personally I’d rather see choices stay permanent and tied to a little power, but the lack of any balance and the wonky soulbinds kind of ruined that hope so it’s whatever works at this point.
If they were saying this, Ion wouldn’t have let us know there was a ripcord ready to pull. They know there’s no way they can get this right and need to be able to undo it when sub numbers drop yet again.
Now if they were really going with “this is the game now, play it or don’t” I’d a respect that at least. Might not play it, but at least it shows some resolve on their part.
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I agree with you in that they have very little chance of getting this right. I do not think they believe that however. They need to have plans for failed ideas. That is exactly what this is, an idea. They are testing the waters to see how people react to having some more permanent choices. If it blows up in their face after multiple content patch attempts at getting it right then come 9.3 they will abandon it and I think having an ‘out’ is the right call.
I guess it depends on how many are left/willing to come back if they wait that long.
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It’s extremely pertinent it’s the latest system blizzard has shown a complete inability to balance within a reasonable level.
That’s a pretty good outline of what would be the likely outcome of what’s to come in SL.
Class choice will still be a key factor in party creation and yes - still be subject to discrimination as it always has. Skilled players on less popular classes will still do well (it’s likely if they are in group 1 they’ll optimise for the best dps covenant unless the utility is unparalleled).
I’ll fall into group two on the metric I’d still clear Heroic/16s. Irrespective of my covenant.
Those that are in group 3 probably wouldn’t be affected by the discussion at all because the level of content they do would have no difference on if covenants were locked or not.
We’ll all be fine.
But thats like, your own problem if you force yourself to feel that way??
I think the perception is that we’re still going to have to be a part of the covenant to get its benefits, and so basically if it’s too easy to swap, people are going to expect you to swap on a wim, because why not, right? Even worse, this potentially doubles/triples/quadruples the soulbind grind. because now that it’s so easy, why not have all your soulbinds leveled so you can be captain optimal all the time? Also, it’s going to be annoying to swap between covenants all the time for “O I want to grind my appearances” then “O crap I need to be Venthyr for this dungeon”.
I quite frankly, want the ripcord firmly in place, but with massive covenant buffs in all group play, not just dungeons. In fact I’d want every covenant to bring something, that way, you’d want a diverse cross section of covenants in your group. Maybe even moreso than particular classes. I want the choice to mean something and I want people to be like “Wow! You’re Maldraxxus, please join us!” Not omg, you’re not X covenant, screw you. I think making every covenant powerful in its own right and useful to everyone is the best way to encourage diversity. The power gains may have to scale against numbers of each covenant, especially for raids. Like you wouldn’t want just one of each covenant and the rest captain optimal. You’d want a good reason to keep the numbers closer to even with the way the buffs scale.
I could use ‘That’s your own problem’ as a retort to any statement including the proposition at the start.
It isn’t helpful though is it?
“Force yourself to feel that way”. I could use that same phrase to respond to anyone opposed to #PullTheRipcord, but I won’t, because it’s a stupid argument.
I got one better for you. How about they create a game were the standards are more than “we have a emergency plan when the game fails” scenario. Make a better product from the start. Crazy right. 
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Not sure if this has been said before, but my biggest issue would be, if you are able to change whenever you want, you will be expected to, even the casual who might occasionally want to delve into a lower mythic plus or normal mode raid. They would most likely be expected by the PuG community to change or no invite. Kind of like talents and azerite traits now, if you can change you must change or be declined.
Honestly, well I know Blizz has never been great at balance, I say don’t make them abandon it right away, let them give it a shot, if it fails, then by all means open it up, but don’t ditch it and have them admit defeat before the expansion is even out.
I say this as someone who doesn’t like these rental power systems at all, but I still say, let it go a patch cycle, maybe 1.5 and if it can’t be balanced then fine.
Would also like to add, they already put the resources into this system, and asking them to ditch it right out of the gates would feel like the resources were wasted all along, which also doesn’t give them an incentive to even try to balance them either, and people would still be unhappy to some degree anyways.
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Covenants is the first real step back to an actual RPG that Blizzard has made with WoW in a while.
It actually matters.
This is supposed to be an MMORPG. Not just an MMO.
I fully support the covenants.
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