It seems obvious to me. Blizzard clearly intends to give of access to all four covenants eventually.
Originally there was talk at that the covenants are at war, fighting over anima, and we’d have covenant vs covenant pvp. Now venthir are inviting leaders in the other covenants to parties. And covenant vs covenant pvp is dead.
Once we’ve completely restored a zone back to 100% and settled the conflicts within it, it only makes since that they would expect us to move on to help restore the other zones. And why would they take issues with their savior, who saved them from an eternity of suffering in the maw, walking around in armor of another covenant when they know our goal is to restore order and balance in the shadowlands. They know who we are and what were about.
Each .0 patch wed be invited to join an additional covenant and be able to start progressing it. It solves every single issue the players have with the system.
We’d be able to choose between the covenant spells at our whim, we’d have access to additional soulbinds to create more load outs. The seven day cooldown to respec you conduits would be a non issue once you have unlocked additional soulbinds. You’d eventually unlock the fast travel for all four zones. Everyone would be able to use the dungeon covenant perks. You’d eventually unlock all cosmetic rewards for each covenant.
With each content patch instead of blizzard having to create new “daily busy content” they flip a switch and we have a second covenant to progress. This presumes renown has an end point and eventually can be completed. You’d just continue the same renown progression you’d been doing weekly, this time its for a new covenant and the benefits that gives. They might even have the renown catch up in place for each covenant after the first.
With the “daily busy content” set for the entire expansion, this would allow blizzard to focus more development time on better patch content. Freeing up resources to let them possibly add more dungeons, more raid bosses, and most importantly to me, keep on top of class balance. We could get more things like the chomie scenario and the mage tower. They could continue to develop torghast and improve on it based on feedback throughout the entire expansion.
My final point is that this explains why the devs seem so reluctant to just let us have all the covenant abilitys at launch. Its already factored into to the expansions power progression.
Thats it. Am I crazy? Or does this make sense to anyone else? LETS TALK ABOUT IT!
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Makes sense. Like you were able to equip more neck powers on your artifact as the expansion went on.
I smell a bloody coup… Ooh imagine the faerie dude drinking tea then suddenly gets strangled from behind!
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At the VERY LEAST we’re gonna get spec specific covenants. But I see no way they don’t pull that ripcord and unlock covenants. It’s just bad gameplay if we don’t, and gameplay is the thing carrying WoW. it sure as heck hasn’t been the lore.
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I see where you’re coming from but I can’t say I agree. I think instead we’ll get more poorly conceived “meaningful choices” with each patch.
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Don’t forget about the maw covenant that we know exists but have zero information.
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Unfortunately, some people seem like theyll be time gating their purchase of the expansion and have other things keep them busy in the meantime.
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Would be neat if they do it with GoT’s Red Wedding style.
Something more than strangling…
They will let us have all 8 abilities at the same time
That was the original plan, as the expansion moves forward you’d eventually unlock them all. Still might be the case, but they might speed up that timeline pending how things go. They have a backup plan and they will use it if need be.
I like to think of the Covenants as different factions. You get to play through them all the first time around, figure out where you want to stand, and then you make a choice for that character. The second+ time(s) around, you can make that choice first thing to save time. The nice thing is that you can change your faction later and it doesn’t cost you any money 
Although covenant PvP sounds cool. It wouldn’t work. People were already raging about the fact the Alliance and Horde work together to fight the bad guys. Let alone the rumor that turned to be false about the faction joining together to make one faction. So it seems cool and I would love it but I think blizzard is done hearing complaints of things that seem cool. Let alone it won’t make sense that we’re in the same guild while fighting them because of two different covenants.
Blizzard would never withhold quality of life changes to last patch.
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Yea that’s what I think too. We will end up with it anyway so might as well just give it to us from the start.
Nah they wouldn’t do something like this. Being friendly with other races doesn’t give you there racial abilities, this will be no different.
So you think we’re gonna get a teleport, shadowmeld, healthstone and chargeable shield all at the same time? As well as 4 more random abilities that usually change something we already have? I mean…yeah, that’d be cool and all but that’s a lot of buttons.
War is what we want, not peace since it only serve the weak!
Thats not what I said. We obviously would have a way to swap between them. Like an extra talent row where you’d get to pick by covenant. I never said we’d have 8 new spells. If you pick necrolords you’d have there 2 abilities then you pop a tome and you can swap to nightfae.
I feel like it is likely that in 9.3 or something all characters will have access to all covenant abilities at least.