Of all the conflicts in World of Warcraft‘s 16-year history, the war between the Horde and the Alliance has lasted the longest. Players have been forced to pick a side since the very beginning, and it’s still a long-standing BlizzCon tradition for Alliance and Horde players to sound off against each other during the opening ceremony. Though the relationship between the factions has shifted with every expansion’s story, the game mechanics supporting them have largely remained the same. Alliance and Horde players can’t speak to or play with each other, and if they have PvP enabled, they can kill each other on sight.
Getting killed by a rival player is a World of Warcraft rite of passage, and many consider it to be a key element of the game. But with the scope of the story growing beyond the planet of Azeroth and into other planes of existence, faction-based PvP is starting to feel less necessary than it once did. Players now have four otherworldly Covenants to choose from, and the tensions between them feel much more compelling than the tensions between the Alliance and the Horde.
There have been a few moments in World of Warcraft‘s history where the Alliance and the Horde have set aside their differences to fight a greater evil. At the beginning of the Legion expansion, the two factions fought side by side against an incursion of demonic forces. The next expansion, Battle for Azeroth, saw the Horde and Alliance back at each others’ throats, but by the end another truce was put into place so that they could work together to defeat an evil Old God.
In fact, the senselessness of unending war has been a prominent theme since the end of BfA. Shadowlands begins with Sylvanas Windrunner capturing leaders from both the Alliance and the Horde, and all players have to work against her in order to get them back. These leaders treat players of both factions the same way, and with the exception of four different Covenant campaigns, players get to see the same story. None of the main NPCs speak in favor of hatred or division, and most of the characters who fuel the flames of warfare are explicitly antagonists.
This all goes out the window once players start exploring the new zones. Those who’ve opted into PvP can be targeted by members of the opposite faction. And while this keeps a popular element of the game alive, it seems to be antithetical to the theme of the expansion. Players are meant to be the only living mortals who have ever set foot in the afterlife. Why would they immediately start killing each other?
A huge element of the endgame in Shadowlands involves picking one of four Covenants to work with: Kyrian, Necrolords, Night Fae, or Venthyr. Nearly everything a player does after hitting level 60 is in service of restoring this Covenant to its former glory. While some Covenants are better for certain classes than others, many players pick their Covenant based on its aesthetic. Like so many options in WoW, it’s a way of expressing oneself.
One thing these Covenants lack is camaraderie. Outside of seeing other players in passing, there’s no way to celebrate or even acknowledge being in a Covenant together. And if a Horde and an Alliance player are pledged to the same Covenant, there’s nothing keeping them from killing each other as soon as they leave their sanctum. In an expansion about putting aside past differences to fight for the greater good, keeping players locked in arbitrary conflict feels like a missed opportunity. With four very obvious teams introduced in Shadowlands, pitting them against each other seems like a more compelling way to explore this expansion’s story.
There are quite a few ways that Covenants could compete against each other. The most obvious would be to allow PvP between members of different Covenants, but this would have the major drawback of effectively restricting each player to their Covenant’s zone. Instead, Blizzard could give each Covenant an enemy Covenant that rotates each week. This would allow players to travel to the zones of the other two Covenants in relative safety, while still allowing for healthy competition.
Another solution would be a Hogwarts-inspired Covenant leaderboard. Covenant members would be able to earn points by completing world quests, running dungeons, and raiding Castle Nathria. At the end of each week, the members of the winning Covenant would receive some sort of reward. The reward couldn’t be anything game-breaking, but a small boost in the amount of Anima they’re able to collect that week or the opportunity to meet a unique NPC might be appropriate.
With the rest of World of Warcraft still heavily reliant on a partition between the Horde and the Alliance, it’s easy to see why Blizzard chose to keep that conflict intact in Shadowlands. Creating a handful of zones where that partition is no longer in effect could be confusing for players, and could have unforeseen consequences in other areas of the game. For example, if members of the same Covenant were able to trade with each other regardless of which faction they belonged to, that could have catastrophic consequences for the game’s economy.
Covenants are also meant to be fairly easy to leave if a player gets tired of the one they’ve chosen. Switching Covenants isn’t encouraged, but it’s much simpler than the process of changing from Horde to Alliance, or vice versa. If Blizzard had chosen to pit the Covenants against each other, then the current system would allow players to easily switch to an enemy Covenant, wreak havoc from within, and switch back. The game would devolve into EVE Online-style subterfuge and treachery, which would shift focus away from the story Blizzard is trying to tell. To combat this, players would need to be locked into their Covenant choice, but an irrevocable decision of that magnitude seems to go against a major World of Warcraft design principle.
Ultimately, it seems like there’s a lot of potential that hasn’t been fully explored yet. With patch 9.1 likely being announced at BlizzConline this weekend, hopefully Blizzard will share its plans to make the Covenant system more compelling.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is available now on PC.
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