Shadowlands Covenant Ability Location Restriction Removed

[Chromell]

What if Blizzard decides to use old zones during the expansion and adds content for level 60s. You and I can't tell the future obviously but Blizzard has been known to use old zones and such to push the game forward.

The Assaults on Uldum and Vale of Eternal Blossoms are great examples.

[Th3Scourge]

Lets be real. Their not going to balance classes and specs around these abilities. They'll do any and all balancing in regards to them to the abilities themselves. Their abilities that make sense to be locked to current content since nothing prior will even need it. Who is going to be running around and using these abilities in old content? Other than maybe during old raid farming if its put into their rotation sure.

The same argument applies the other way. If it has no impact on Azeroth/Old World, then why bother adding a restriction? The rationale they gave was flawed, because BG's/Arenas are part of Azeroth, yet covenant abilities are active...

And even then, lots of people enjoy dueling outside Org/SW, so doing something like that for no gain is a terrible decision. And you can see why they thought twice about it

[Zantos]

What if Blizzard decides to use old zones during the expansion and adds content for level 60s. You and I can't tell the future obviously but Blizzard has been known to use old zones and such to push the game forward.

Then they enable the abilities in those zones. They've done that with a lot of things before. Enabling something in a specific zone isn't new to them or hard.

- - - Updated - - -

The same argument applies the other way. If it has no impact on Azeroth/Old World, then why bother adding a restriction? The rationale they gave was flawed, because BG's/Arenas are part of Azeroth, yet covenant abilities are active...

And even then, lots of people enjoy dueling outside Org/SW, so doing something like that for no gain is a terrible decision. And you can see why they thought twice about it

If it only functioned in the new area, people would duel there. Like they did in Dalaran. The problem is that most new hubs just don't have a place they can duel at or near easily.

While the same argument the other way does apply, it just highlights why it shouldn't bother anyone either way. Enabled, disabled, doesn't matter. Its not impactful. Just in this case, people got mad for no reason.

[Ronald The Mcdonald]

Then they enable the abilities in those zones. They've done that with a lot of things before. Enabling something in a specific zone isn't new to them or hard.

So it's okay in those old zones but it wouldn't be in others? What would happen if I reverted those zones back to how they previously were? This is all rhetorical but my main point is that when Blizzard has a history of giving us borrowed power, like Artifact weapons and essences which was a core staple to our class there hasn't been any restrictions regarding the use of it in any piece of content. So using the covenant abilities as a comparison it shouldn't have any restrictions in that same manner as well.

[Hyrican]

there is a lot of player power increases that you achieve in the covenant system...

The feeling of accomplishment which goes together with having just fun playing the game is immediately removed if you you have x0% less power not just mathematically or % wise but by restricting abilities and add-on effects on abbilities. This feeling is expected at the end of an expansion and is replaced by new shiny things to get in the future... Not so much in the beginning.

[Baneto]

people got mad for no reason.

The hell they were, this was a stupid decision and Blizzard realized it.

[Kauko]

Internally? Ok, now we are getting closer on who has this "funny" ideas...

[erifwodahs]

Don't be so hard on yourself. I'll make it simpler for ya. There is no point in needing them outside of the shadowlands. Just like there wasn't any point to the other abilities or combat allies being used outside of their areas either. These are not "built into the class" as you put it. Their a few optional abilities that will change depending on whom you choose that will be balanced and adjusted completely independently of the rest of the classes abilities and functions. Sure, they might adjust how they interact with some abilities, but it wont be true in the other direction. The class wont be balanced around the covenant abilities.

There was no need for Legion artifacts and legendaries to work outside the Broken Shore. It still would have felt crap to teleport back to WoD and loose your spells/ effects, wouldn't you think? It wasn't like tier sets or lvl100 talent stopped functioning when you left WoD. While it's ok to be disabled after we are done with the expansion, it's bad design to have it non working while it is current.
And they are built in class, with covenant abilities and CLASS abilities. Hence whole - It's [covenant] + [class] and not just [class] rhetoric. Good thing they are listening.

[Azerate]

Very glad they listened. It would be really unpleasant to go do anything outside of SL and find half your character missing. I understand that people who do little to no old content and just do dungeons/raids/pvp in the current expansion might think this wouldn't be an issue, but for those of us who play the game hollistically, that would have been a disaster.

Wow just isn't the kind of a game this kind of thing was ever done in and people aren't used to it. Even in timewalking, we can use all the abilities from the current expansion. In FF14 you are locked out of higher level abilities while doing lower level instances, but in wow your character is your character and artificial removal of its parts would just feel bad. Especially if you do this kind of thing for the first time 15 years into the game's life cycle.

[TickTickTick]

Wait... "yes, there will be one" "there will be one" "one" ??? Holyheck! The next expansion will be the last expansion!

I guess english is not your first language. "There will be one" is a normal way to say that something will be there. It's not implying that only one will be there, just that there will be the thing mentioned earlier.

[Gnomesized]

In a way there were on to something. If they'd restricted covenant abilities even further, to just non-instanced Shadowlands areas (similar to how Legion combat allies worked) it would have solved all the covenant balance problems around dungeons and raids.

[The Butt Witch]

I think Blizzard decided to revert it after seeing Asmongold literally having an emotional breakdown on his stream upon finding out about this.

[Lionhearte0]

But there's rumors around the halls that there might be a "WoW 2" in development

What's the source for that? Your ass?

[therealbowser]

Glad to see Blizzard is listening and does care about these things... it gives me some small amount of hope for Shadowlands, if nothing else.

[uncl55]

Good job reversing this nonsese.

[pkusa]

Why are they wasting their time with this bull shit? Why were they even thinking about this in the first place? Fix the major issues with the expansion.. Make the delay justified ffs.

[darkwarrior42]

Why are they wasting their time with this bull shit? Why were they even thinking about this in the first place? Fix the major issues with the expansion.. Make the delay justified ffs.

They were thinking about it because at the end of recent expansions, they've had to simultaneously rip out that expansion's system while prepping for the new.

At the end of Legion, we lost Artifacts and everything they granted, but gained new talents in preparation for BFA. Now, we'll be losing corruptions (with the pre-patch), as well as essences and azerite traits (in SL), but gaining Covenants/Soulbinds/etc in their place. At the end of Shadowlands, they'll have to rip out the covenant system or restrict it to Shadowlands (so characters that level after the SL expansion has ended won't be forced into SL to get their covenant stuff unlocked) while they prepare whatever new system will be brought in with the expansion that comes next.

If they built the Shadowlands Covenant system such that it was already restricted to Shadowlands content, they wouldn't need to change the system at all. You gain the system for SL, you have it while you're in SL, and that's it. When we move on to whatever the next expansion is, that system would be similarly self-contained. It's a fairly logical idea, from that perspective.

I do think it's a poor idea, because they design classes around the inclusion of the expansion systems. It would feel very unsatisfying to leave the Shadowlands and all of a sudden lose access to core aspects of your class toolkit. Whether or not those tools are necessary is irrelevant. We don't lose max level talents or abilities when going to old zones, we don't have high ilvl gear disabled or scaled down, we don't lose anything else, so losing this feels arbitrary and punitive.

But it would make things much easier for them going forward, which is why I'm not upset that they considered it. I'm mostly just happy they listened to the feedback and decided not to go through with it.

[Wuusah]

(I mean, it’s a bit weird seeing someone’s summoned swolekin just hanging out in the Orgrimmar AH)

What if they gave swolekin a ghost form outside of Shadowlands?

[sunnycutie]

"Oh look, Blizzard really does listen to us." - The fooled player

[THEORACLE64]

The hell they were, this was a stupid decision and Blizzard realized it.

It wasn’t because it was totally understandable why they made implemented it. However, I didn’t think it would stay seeing as Blizzard are caving really easily to the salty bandwagon lately.