In the months leading up to the October 26 release of World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, players have been arguing over one particularly contentious feature. Beta players can join any of the four covenants to gain unique and powerful abilities, end-game-exclusive activities, and other benefits. The issue is complex, but the overarching concern is that the Covenant will become unbalanced, forcing players to choose the Covenant that the meta deems the most powerful, rather than the one they think is the coolest. After months of discussion and listening to feedback, game director Ion Hazzikostas announced today that no major changes will be made to this feature before "Shadowlands" launches.

In a lengthy forum post, Hazzikostas spelled out the roadmap leading up to Shadowlands' launch and revealed several major changes in various aspects of the expansion, most interestingly for WoW veterans: the covenant system will remain mostly probably remain the same. There are, however, some tweaks to ease the anxiety of accidentally choosing the wrong covenant and wanting to overturn that decision.

"In short, players who regret their choice of covenant and want to change their minds should be able to do so honestly at any point during the expansion period and will reach a point where they have no long-term disadvantages or disadvantages compared to those who have been in that covenant all along." Hazzikostas writes.

The covenant system will largely determine how players spend their time once they reach the new level cap in the new expansion and enter the endgame of Shadowlands. After spending the main story campaign playing around with each covenant, players will have the choice of whether or not to join a covenant. In return, players will get uniquely styled loot, two powerful abilities to use in battle, and a subtle progression system and story quests unique to that Covenant. This is a big decision, and naturally players are anxious about whether it will be balanced or result in one covenant being clearly superior to the other.

This debate has been going on since Shadowlands' first alpha test, and Blizzard has responded to the negative feedback by making it easier to switch covenants, but with enough restrictions so that players cannot switch back and forth at will ... In a forum post, Hazzikostas said that players will be able to switch to a new Covenant instantly if they choose to at Shadowlands' launch, but to switch back, they will need to complete two quests that will be on cooldown every week He stated that the player will need to complete two quests that will be cooldown every week to switch back. Basically, switching Covenants is easy, but reverting back to one Covenant takes at least a week.

As Hazzikostas explains, WoW already has many ways for players to instantly change their character's behavior in combat, and Blizzard wanted to make the Covenant a core part of your identity (like classes and races) because It is.

"Instead of adding yet another layer to that decision matrix, we're trying to do something different here.

"And that identity has a mix of aesthetic preferences, narrative experiences, and mechanical strengths and weaknesses.

However, Hazzikostas has made it clear that balancing and tuning Covenants will be an ongoing process over the next few years, and that the team hopes a gentle touch will ease players' concerns rather than a major overhaul. For some players, that does not seem to be a relief.

The Twitter replies to Wowhead's tweet and the sentiments expressed by prominent streamers like Asmongold and Preach have led many players to believe that Blizzard's adherence to the current Battle for Azeroth expansion, indicating a concern that Blizzard's adherence could re-create the kind of situation that occurred with the current Battle for Azeroth expansion. Players felt that their complaints about core features were ignored until the expansion was launched. As a result, Blizzard spent nearly two years fixing a system that the community had been complaining about for nearly as long.

"I was pretty disappointed with the doubling down on the Covenant system," wrote one player. It's basically [Battle for Azeroth] all over again." I communicated my dissatisfaction with this system early on and they are still ignoring it. I love the game and of course will still play it, but I wish they weren't so stubborn."

Of course, the issue is not so black and white--especially while Shadowlands is still in beta and only a few weeks away from launch; Blizzard has repeatedly asked players to reserve judgment until more balancing is done, but many I can understand why many would be skeptical. Either way, Shadowlands is beginning to feel like a lightening or darkening moment for World of Warcraft.

Hazzikostas' developer update is worth reading in full, as it touches on more than just Covenants.

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will launch on October 26 and 27, depending on your time zone.