They were about as good of an idea as Azerite and essences were.
So, no.
They need to cut the BS and just focus on game content. Legion did one thing right, it was an abundance of content.
Remember: Meaningful choice! That was the key phrase.
Also, it’s amusing to see that the concerns that were discussed and largely discounted by many on the forums at the time have come back as reasonable discussion posts once they have been experienced.
It’s unfortunate that when these were actually listed as concerns as to the long term impact of the expansion, that instead of it being summarily discounted and ignored, could have actually improved the game. However many on the forums took to those posts pointing out just these kinds of challenges and turned it into the ongoing battle between the ‘elitists’ and the casuals and a lot of really great suggestions (like this one) were lost in the fray.
But… meaningful choice and all that.
3 Likes
This is a really good point
personally i LOVE the mounts and armor sets. such a shame i’ve only had time to unlock only kyrian…
If they where more accessible than they currently are then yes.
As it stands it isn’t due to how user unfriendly it is to change Covenants.
That the restriction exists for “meaningful choice” is a poor excuse in an mmorpg where I can find more meaningful choice playing Skyrim for the 12th time.
I think on paper is a great idea, provides different flavors. You have to admit it, each zone is different. Each cov borrowed power does have flavor (For good and/or bad). Even the storyline is pretty entertaining during the first few go round.
I think if they make it easier to swap between cov, that’ll resolve some of the issue. Sure, you still have to grind the renown but once grinded, you can swap out as easily as going to Oribos and pledging a new allegiance. No need to do quests, deal with cool down, just a quick swap.
I don’t mind making the selection, but I was hoping that the transmogs and pets would at least be account-wide. They didn’t lock the Warrior battle pet to only Warriors, and it can be caged and sold. They set a precedent, but then didn’t follow through with it.
Transmogs I can accept a bit more, since each class does have a Class Hall armor set that is locked to the class. Doesn’t mean I have to like it. lol
I think covenants are a dumber and more annoying version of class halls. I give Blizzard a tiny bit of credit for trying something different but it was still a swing and a miss.
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Could of been. They would of been better just being pre-assigned to your class. At least that would of helped balance them better
Blizzard doesn’t understand yet that the players don’t want any choice when it comes to performance. There really are no choices and never have been.
We want to be the most powerful we can be for the content being currently engaged, and to easily make changes to cover our strengths and weaknesses in the fly when we change content so we always are optimal.
Choices and strengths and weaknesses have no place in this game for many.
We sim the “choices” anyway and ignore anything not the best, making the “choice” not really a choice.
It happens with races, specs, talents, classes, and of course covenants.
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If they were somewhat balanced I’d probably like them, and wouldn’t mind being locked into one. As it is, for paladins they decided to make kyrian amazing in almost every situation for every spec, venthyr good for holy in specific situations, and that’s it. There’s a reason necrolord and nightfae paladin numbers are abysmally low, hell I used to be necrolord myself.
Think it would have been better to make them each factions you can work with and swap between at will, instead of pledging loyalty to just one. Working with just one as the fabled maw walker doesn’t make sense, and it would alleviate the balance issues. Meaningful choice is great, but if the choice is super unbalanced, it ends up sucking the fun out of the idea.
Still waiting for necrolord pally to finally not be absolute suck.
In WoD, we all had Garrisons, which developed in whatever ways we chose to develop them based on buildings and quests and dailies and what not.
No real story elements per se, just more events that we got to pick through.
Legion had Class Halls. Each class had a bit of storyline they could work through plus the mounts and other things.
BfA had two, distinct story lines based on faction. Much greater length and depth to go through the war campaign from each side.
With Garrisons, Class Halls, and the Faction War, I won’t say we players had “no choice”, but I will say “not much”. Garrisons were for everyone, everyone had to do a “little” bit at the minimum. Class and Faction, for existing characters, no real choice here.
Now we have covenants. 4 zones, 4 storylines. The key difference is that not only can our character choose which one to participate in, we can choose to participate in any or all of them. I don’t have to level a new toon to switch from Kyrian to Venthyr and run through the covenant campaign.
The covenant campaigns are, on the whole I think, longer than the Class Hall campaigns, but not as long as the War campaign.
People focus simply on the power angle of the covenants, and nothing else. Which is too bad, there’s a lot of stuff here to tap in to.
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This is the problem. Not everyone is like this, and they just don’t know how to balance for both optimal and suboptimal playstyles. While I am still enjoying the choices I make for my characters, I can see how simmers would feel shoehorned. The additional problem, though, is that once they lift the covenant restrictions, the simmers will still sim, and will still feel like they have no choice but play a certain way to succeed. It’s a myth, and the current min/max situation is still, “being the most optimal you can be,” because you always have to consider the game constraints when doing so, including covenant restrictions.
There is just this “grass is greener” situation, because you get to taste the powers from all of the covenants, and then if your selection doesn’t match the sims, you feel like Blizzard did you wrong. Ultimately, it’s the players who won’t accept you for who you are, and need you to be sim-maxed, or they just move on to the next path-of-least-resistance player, who’ll make the content less challenging.
I think it’s too early to say.
Their 9.0 implementation has it’s pros and cons. But I am curious to see how 9.1 & 9.2 handle covenants.
If it’s just more of the same, that would suck. So hopefully they expand them more & make the covenant quests longer than 9.0.
Getting weekly 15-20 minute quest chains was a rather jarring way to experience the story.
I like the Covenant system. They just needed to spend way more effort on balance.
I like that each Covenant has unique stuff going on. I see it as comparable to the Legion Class Hall stuff. It’s totally fine to need to play alts to experience the whole story IMO. If you didn’t play a DK or Paladin you missed out on a whole major story arc about the Lich King’s plans during Legion, and that’s fine. It made the world feel bigger if your player wasn’t involved in every single thing.
My biggest confusion is that I still don’t understand why Blizzard doesn’t ramp up anima gains. Double anima gains. Or triple them. Let people get way more anima and they’ll be able to engage with a lot more content. There is a ton of anima-gated activities I have yet to engage with because of anima gating. It’s a bit sad.
Blizzard went in and manually tweaked certain Covenant/Class combos to be BIS because they didn’t want wrong flavor forced on classes. Necrolord is BIS for DK because they wanted people to feel like the “natural” option was not a power loss. Same with Kyrian Paladin, or Night Fae Druid.
I’m hoping now that we’re in the thick of it though, they can open things up and let people feel like other options are worth taking.
Like a lot of the new stuff, I think it’s a good idea but poorly implemented.
And then there’s Kyrian being BiS for Havoc DHs and Night Fae for Affliction Locks 
Or Necrolord for Holy Priest I think? I mean, come on, they should’ve had Kyrian as their BiS. In fact all other covenants seem more fitting than Necrolord😅
Maybe just me but the natural choices for Havoc DH and Affliction Lock would be Venthyr or Necrolord, not just aesthetic wise but also thematically.
Then… Mages… I mean I like being a frost blood mage but fire mage having Night Fae as BiS? Fire burns down trees. I mean as a Blood elf I’m not against it (
), but why’d you invite all those fire mages into your forest? The Nelves should’ve briefed them better tehe… Heh… Sorry 
The idea of having covenants was good, the implementation, not so much. They should never have tied player power to covenants, they should have only had xmog, mounts, pets and toys as covenant specific.
They should have also let us do all the campaigns for all four of them on one character, you are just missing too much of the story if you don’t do it.
If they simply placed all the covenant powers and soulbinds locked behind each covenant, allowed us to do each covenant campaign to unlock all the powers and soulbinds, than made it a separate talent system problem solved.
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If they didnt do the conduits and soulbinds – sure.
Venthyr Blood Elf Frost Mage makes a lot of sense to me.
As far as Night Fae Fire Mages… yeah, it’s a bit harder to rationalize. The balance of the forest is that sometimes the forest has to burn down to make way for new life?
And yeah, I mean the system isn’t perfect. There’s obviously less natural fits that are simply gameplay driven. Blizzard could do more to shore that up and let people play the option that they want to play and that things “work out”. For instance, Prot Warrior right now has 3 different viable options. Other classes would ideally be in the spot where they can play what makes sense or they can choose to deviate and there are consequences and changes but nobody feels like they ruined their character for playing say a Kyrian Shaman or something like that.
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