Picking a covenant to join in World of Warcraft's Shadowlands expansion has been an important choice: changing to a new one meant going through a weeks-long series of quests. Blizzard's lifting those restrictions in the MMORPG's 9.1.5 patch, due out November 2, in part because of how players have changed their behaviour and expectations throughout WoW's 17-year lifespan.
"From the outset of Shadowlands, we set that [selection of covenants] up as a pretty heavy choice," game director Ion Hazzikostas tells us. "Once you picked a covenant, you could only switch to another one by going through a questline to atone or rejoin the covenant that you had once left. We've heard a lot from players over the last year that that was limiting their ability to play the way they prefer to."
Costs like the lengthy questline, or the old gold price tag for fiddling with talent points in the original game, were deliberate uses of friction meant to add weight to a role-playing decision, Hazzikostas explains. But increasingly, Blizzard has found that isn't how players approach World of Warcraft anymore.
RELATED LINKS: WoW Shadowlands review, WoW Shadowlands leveling guide, WoW Classic leveling guide
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