Say you only do your 1k anima a week, it will take you literally 14 years to collect everything in the Nightfae cov. Okay fine, you've got lots of free time, you do 2k anima a week! Great, that's still 7 years. Seven actual years.
Was 9.0-9.1 supposed to be a 7-14 year wait? Maybe 7-14 years until the next expac? I don't think so. Theres even no reason to believe the covenants, which are THE expac feature, are fully formed. Our Legion class halls had new still throughout the expac, the covs likely will too. What we have now is likely meant for a patch or two at most in lifespan, sadly the costs do not reflect that.
You're also making it up that anima "was calculated" to keep you playing with those specific lengths of time in mind, that is not a matter of public record and has never been stated. Blizzard hasn't even said the prices are to make us "feel the anima drought". They have not given any official reason at all. Noting here that the costs of anima were greatly increased right before launch after the expac's launch date was pushed back.
This is almost the infamous "sense of pride and accomplishment" quote. Furthermore, it's just wrong. Blizz specifically said progress is saved on each covenant so you can complete one and move onto the next if you want to go the completionist route. This was stated before the anima cost increase.It also exists as an investment of time and effort into a given Covenant, putting value in their choice and making each player less inclined to keep changing Covenants.
Wait, are you still talking about anima costs? Cause again, no it wasn't. Meaningful choices in RPG were the covenant selections themselves and lack of ease to re-join a previous covenant, not the prohibitively expensive anima costs. I suppose it is a pretty meaningful choice to select which covenant reward you want to work for, seeing as going for all of them would take 14 years.It was all done to please the requests for more meaningful choices in the RPG, and it's working.
I think the fact of the matter is, Blizz didn't handle COVID very well and they simply didn't get enough done in time. The anima costs were a panic response to a potential content drought, and we will likely see greater anima yields in 9.1.