wow Player Reactions to the 9.1.5 Free Covenant Swap Aka Ripcord Pulling

[Starym 3,800]

 

The locked Covenant choice has been a sore subject ever since the beta (alpha?), with Blizzard adamantly claiming it was an important role playing decision and sticking with it all through 9.1. However, with 9.1.5 that ripcord has been well and truly pulled, as players can now freely switch Covenants (with Renown 80 on one char) and not only choose their powerful abilities at will, but also work on upgrading and unlocking all Covenant content on one character!

Now that the system has been live for a while, let's take a look at some player reactions to it. They seem to be preeetty preeety™ positive, with the exception of "why wasn't this a thing sooner". Also, make sure to remember that you need Renown 80 with 1 character to be able to get the free swap... some below swapped a little too early:

I am really enjoying this, it should have been like this from the start. Already renown 80 for Night Fae and Kyrian on my main, have Necrolord to 51 after today. Venthyr next! Going to go for all covenants at 80 renown. - slalomz ... Who would've thought that being able to switch between the Covenant abilities that are best for PvP, raids and dungeons is something that the players wanted? And Ion still thinks he did nothing wrong. - HolypenguinHere ... I didnt know you have to have renown lvl 80 to switch freely and now I’m renown lvl 1 kyrian ? - Electrical-War6462 ... It does feel great just walking up to the NPC and switching, did it a couple of times this morning just because I could haha. I feel like they thought that they wanted the cov choice to be super impactful and meaningful to you and you would stick with them and immerse yourself in their world, their story and resonate with it. However, it became a mess when tuning changes happened and you either lost power or, the other covs gained power you wanted. It's good it's finally changed for sure. Very nice QOL. - scott_tridge ... I think it’s clear that they always planned to have covenants swappable eventually. But were going to save it as content during a dry spell. They just didn’t expect that dry spell to be after the first patch… - createcrap ... It's fuckin mind boggling that they designed all this content then only let players see 1/3rd of it per char. Most people aren't altaholics and aren't going to play through all three campaigns on diff chars. - Equivalent-Ability20 ... Maybe unpopular opinion, but imo I was ok with the way it was at the start, but this change should have come in 9.0.5, not 9.1.5 (and we should have known that locked covenants was a temporary thing). From the jump shadowlands threw more expansion features/systems at us on day 1 than ever before, it was a lot to learn in a short amount of time. I think that locking players to a single covenant reduced the number of things that had to be considered at a given time, which was good. However, by the time 9.0.5 came around we knew what we were doing. The locked covenants didn't serve a purpose anymore. It was also nonsense from a lore perspective once Denathrius was defeated. - hfxRos ... A few awkward points still but it's good. Hearthstones switch to Oribos from Covenant sanctum (not sure if it's to Oribos regardless of where you have it set), mission table missions are all cancelled, Covenant Abilities on your actionbars don't auto switch, also (may just be missing it) but I seem to have issues getting the souls quest to start. Portals to each Covenant would be nice, good use for the Hearthstone toys. - Belazriel

This particular old article (April 2020) from even before the alpha, when the Covenant abilities were first detailed comes to mind, as basically all of the problems and issues that have been causing problems pre-9.1.5 are very clearly and presciently listed there, so if you want some negative-nostalgia, check that one out as well.

And here are just some of the threads on the matter:

Hopefully we won't have issues like this in the future, as the entire community tries to explain that a major system is a bad idea, only to have to wait almost a year for it to get fixed.

[Dreamcatcher 66]

Long time since i see my guildmates and friends happy playing wow like this

[Dejo93 1,023]

23 minutes ago, Dreamcatcher said:

Long time since i see my guildmates and friends happy playing wow like this

>Doing what players want makes them happy

Imagine that 🙂

[Starym 3,800]

15 minutes ago, Dejo93 said:

>Doing what players want makes them happy

Imagine that 🙂

I mean, it's true in this case, but man do players have BAD ideas sometimes. I don't think it's as easy as all that - obviously the Covenant thing was obvious AF since everyone was against it, but there are many other player-driven wants that really should not ever be listened to. Everyone like to pretend game development is easy "just listen to the community" etc, but it really really isn't.

[BobTheHuman 72]

2 hours ago, Starym said:

Hopefully we won't have issues like this in the future, as the entire community tries to explain that a major system is a bad idea, only to have to wait almost a year for it to get fixed.

Ion's recent interview doesn't leave me very hopeful, seems like they will continue with stubborn mindset of ''We are Blizzard and we've been making this game for 20 years, we know best and every expansion is a clear improvement of the previous one''. The one good thing is that before FFXIV wasn't part of the picture, but now it very much is a worthy competitor and it may be the cause of a dramatic change of course in WoW, or maybe not. We'll see.

[Arcling 898]

1 hour ago, BobTheHuman said:

Ion's recent interview doesn't leave me very hopeful, seems like they will continue with stubborn mindset of ''We are Blizzard and we've been making this game for 20 years, we know best and every expansion is a clear improvement of the previous one''.

It does seem like this is the core of his design philosophy, he is the "systems guy". He always followed this formula of borrowed power systems and they always end up getting scrapped (also very imbalanced), only to have some remains of them being moved into the next expansion. Based on that recent interview, it looks like he didn't change his mind, at least not by much. Perhaps some competition might help with that.

[Dejo93 1,023]

1 hour ago, Starym said:

I mean, it's true in this case, but man do players have BAD ideas sometimes. I don't think it's as easy as all that - obviously the Covenant thing was obvious AF since everyone was against it, but there are many other player-driven wants that really should not ever be listened to. Everyone like to pretend game development is easy "just listen to the community" etc, but it really really isn't.

true. but in this specific case, players were saying from the beta that this is needed. 

[edgomatic 17]

Man i would be happy to see Ion to get booted too. Back in the day when you saw him you knew you would get some cool sneak peeks on whats planed, now its just some lame company bla bla. Gosh i cant see his face no more.

[Prophet001 598]

I don't agree.

I think it pushes WoW further into lobby style throw away character design and moves away from building a character in an RPG.

[Grumar 188]

It *filtered* sucks still, having to regrind renown to 80, anima to upgrade all the covenant bases, leveling all the companions, it's literally not worth switch unless it's just for some an hour or so to pvp/raid. 

Blizzard is a *filtered* monkeys paw and always have been they give you what you want but with a huge *filtered* asterisk 

[Elfomal 55]

You know how the players are in a sad state, when blizzard does the basic expected and everyone acts like its the best thing ever to have happened.

 

We should no longer accept less than the very best they can do, we're paying quite a lot for those content, and a simple patchable thing like this should not suffice all those months of no-content.

[Znifler 58]

On 11/6/2021 at 9:27 PM, BobTheHuman said:

Ion's recent interview doesn't leave me very hopeful, seems like they will continue with stubborn mindset of ''We are Blizzard and we've been making this game for 20 years, we know best and every expansion is a clear improvement of the previous one''. The one good thing is that before FFXIV wasn't part of the picture, but now it very much is a worthy competitor and it may be the cause of a dramatic change of course in WoW, or maybe not. We'll see.

Well, all in all, if every game devolper had to make games that did Everything the community said, would that even make it a unique game? The whole point of gamemaking, is to be a subjective take on the creative world they Choose to make. Just like movies. It's the Director's creative vision when it comes down to it. 

If people really have that great ideas, they have to become game devolopers themselves, or swap to more fitting games.

[BobTheHuman 72]

2 hours ago, Znifler said:

Well, all in all, if every game devolper had to make games that did Everything the community said, would that even make it a unique game? The whole point of gamemaking, is to be a subjective take on the creative world they Choose to make. Just like movies. It's the Director's creative vision when it comes down to it. 

If people really have that great ideas, they have to become game devolopers themselves, or swap to more fitting games.

When it comes to ''choice'' systems that are absolute pain in the a$$ and waste your time, players are sick of them and don't want them in the game. The community has been loud and clear on the matter during BFA and SL betas and that feedback was always ignored. I hope there were no surprised Picachu faces at Blizzard when Asmongold, and many other content creators, led a grand exodus to FFXIV.

Edited November 8, 2021 by BobTheHuman