Your distinction is inaccurate, WoW is a “true RPG” the term your looking for is traditional.
It literally is, its a game, where you play a role…
Imo the fundamental problem is an ability like convoke vs an ability like flagellation.
I mean, for the love of **** nobody could possibly be stupid enough to think these two are balanced. Right?
Covenants ended up the way they did because Blizzard valued their creative vision over the players reality.
That or they’re entirely disconnected from the social dynamics of their own game.
I’ve had the exact same discussion with people before that were willing to have a conversation. I don’t quite see the point in repeating myself.
I’m afraid you thinking a comparison is lame doesn’t quite cut it man.
Who forced you to choose your covenant? We’ll fight them together.
The only thing the data has borne out to me is this community is full of people who care for numbers more than RP or even fun in the cases where the “best” cov is annoying to play. I am sad to say that it has proven Blizzard IS catering to the base when they water down RP and remove meaningful choices. I have never felt more that I am in the wrong game and its the players faults, not Blizzard.
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This is my biggest issue with the system by far. It’s impossible to figure out if you’ll actually enjoy a given covenant until you’re deep into it - it heavily disincentivizes experimentation, and thus pushes people toward guides, and the meta.
Hell, if I want to know what a given soulbind is like to play with, I have to invest even moreso.
As someone who loves experimenting with builds, going off-meta and generally just tailoring my character to fit my personal playstyle, the covenant system is a total nightmare.
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idk if this is true but why wouldn’t you?
Why would I willingly make myself weaker in a game where my success goes up if I’m stronger.
This isnt a conversation? I dont see you defending your justification of comparing class choice and covenant choice. Its not comparable beyond generic “choice”.
No one, that’s kind of the point, I like Ardenwald for my Druid, but no everyone has that luxury or covenant ability and esthetic so they feel " forced" into making a decision they don’t want to make.
Insert " that’s a meaningful choice" argument here. It’s not meaningful, not to those who want to be the best at the content they choose to play. They’re forced to make a choice of being subpar and have a good aesthetic or be optimal and have an aesthetic they don’t like.
According to some, for a " meaningful choice"
Not everyone defines fun by how much dps they do. “Winning” isn’t everything.
To be fair, I think Blizzard makes it hard to view the game in other terms because they LOVE to waste our time and we try very hard not to have our time wasted. This usually translates into players picking the FoTM. The issue then becomes that picking FoTM becomes so normalized that it becomes a de facto requirement or you are “bad”.
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Trust me. We were asking for this since the Alpha.
Except you already are an idiot if you intend to PvP but don’t have The Hunt.
See the problem? If you don’t go Night Fae you are utterly abysmal in an entire form of content as a DH.
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There was huge debate over this when covenant systemization was announced. Hazzikostas spent hours defending “meaningful player choice” via streamer interviews prior to Shadowlands launching.
There were tons of fantastic ideas on the forums (like letting players progress and earn rewards with covenants simultaneously), but Blizzard being Blizzard, they announced covenants at a point in time where player feedback couldn’t really be meaningfully considered (BFA anyone?).
Interesting to see that there aren’t as many people defending the system now as there were then though. 
The Venthyr ability is a literal DPS loss to use until tomorrow.
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Exactly. For some reason blizzard was just hell bent on defending their decision and not changing their stance on the matter, even though a massive amount of the player base could already see the potential issues.
Its not a “meaningful player choice” when its tied to player power. It’s because this is a game, and while some people do enjoy RPing a little bit and building a story/background for their character and RPing with them, almost every person playing likes just playing the game more and that means tanking, doing damage or healing. So 9 times out of 10 its just easier and more appealing to pick the covent with the better abilities and soulbinds.
If you don’t think this is true, you just need to look at the stats. Some specs and even classes have around 80-90% pick rate for a SINGLE COVENT, and there are FOUR. While other convents in certain classes/specs have a pick rate lower than 10%. The disparity between this pick rates is actually insane and its because the Covent abilities are just too different and in a lot of cases too imbalanced (even though blizzard ASSURED US they would be very closely balanced so this wouldn’t happen.)
Blizzard needed to just realise that this isn’t what we wanted and it isn’t going to work how they envisioned it and they should’ve just pulled the damn ripcord. Make us infinitely happier because we can swap when we wish while also making their balancing nightmare not so nightmarish anymore due to free swapping. It still wouldve been a very meaningful choice if all we got were the mounts and cosmetic rewards.
The fact that I cannot summon Goop Cat (his name is a banned word on the forums LOL) on other characters is a -TRAVESTY-
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Getting what you want is everything, if what you want doesn’t come from killing faster so be it 