The covenants page...

...needs to be redone.

Dark souls is all about ambiguity, moral and otherwise. That page only makes sense as a Way of White propaganda scheme. Which, you know, doesn't really belong on a wiki.

(I can't post links but you know what I mean)

I'd try to do it myself but I don't think I'm allowed.

Do you mean this page?

http://darksoulswiki.wikispaces.com/Covenants

I don't see what you find wrong with this to be honest... That's how the covenants have always been represented

The "good, neutral, evil" thing? I can't be the only person who objects to that.

And no, there is no such ingame association. If you mean they've always been represented that way in the community, then that's a different problem.

Well I remember it being like that in some official thing somewhere. I could be wrong but like I said its always been that way, official community or no.

Besides honestly those assessments I actually agree with lore wise- they make sense

It's literally just the DnD alignment. And I really don't see Miyazaki or anyone in his team arbitrarily defining the covenant system like that.
It was just something someone made within a month of release. I don't agree with it lorewise, but I don't care enough about it to change it.

I'm afraid I have no idea what you mean by DND. Either way, if you guys can think of a nicer way to set it up (such as graphics featuring a title, cov symbol and blurb), would look great if you could. However just replacing it with hyperlinked titles I think wouldn't look as good

From an average human's perspective of the covenants, that is what they would say.

If they had completely nuetral morals, and knew right from wrong based on a public majority, then that would be the correct answer.

People who worship gods and kindle fires, protect princesses, and and hunt down murderers, would be considered good.

People who protect a graveyard with no mercy, are mercenaries, or collect humanity for an innocent creature would be considered neutral.

And people who murder everyone for their humanity including their brethren, people who curse other worlds so they can kill the owner of that world, and people who worship an ancient dragon, killing, stealing, and doing sick things to people so they can get dragon stones, would be considered evil.

@Serious
Dungeons and Dragons. It's the alignment chart for basic character creation. Someone just took it and applied it to Dark Souls, like so many other things. 
@Wilkes
That's incredibly uninformative of what the Dragon Covenant actually does, among other things.

Serious the alignments presented are from DnD, I've actually always been a bit put off by the alignments attached to the covenants.

I don't think this is something the creators would agree with or endorse.


Even if you want to appeal to "the average person", you should make it clear that this is not the creators' interpretation of morality. It's yours, or theirs if you want to get presumptuous.

In that case, my only complaint would be that the DnD thing simply doesn't fit. The Sunlight guys aren't less moral than the Way of White, who aren't more lawful than the Princess guards, who aren't really all that more righteous than the Chaos servants, who I suppose are "chaotic" in a roundabout kind of way, but not in the same way as the Dark moons or wraiths. Et cetera.

The DnD-style system is supposed to act as a sort of quick guideline, a set of archetypes that covenants follow. The point isn't to accurately describe the intricate details of the covenant's goals and methods, but to provide an easy way to get the basic idea of covenants to someone brand new to them. This style of presenting things isn't just a DnD thing, it works on a human-psychological level in a way that makes a lot of sense to us and is very familiar. You can generally put any person you know into one of these archetypes.

That doesn't mean it's very accurate. Some fit in their chosen path better than others, and some have aspects that don't fit at all. People shouldn't be using this as a be-all-end-all rule to what these covenants are like, but a precursor to going into the game and finding out for yourself.

One of the problems that lie in the page is that each archetype is filled with a covenant. This means that, unless the designers had such an idea in mind, some covenants get paths that fit them, while other covenants are forced to take what's left over.

The other problem I have is that in the game itself, "Law", "Chaos", "Good", and,"Evil", aren't really clear, nor were they intended to be. Putting covenants in these DnD-style paths makes sense in some environments, such as DnD, where good and evil was mostly clear and predetermined. However, putting them in dark souls sort of forces ideas of what is considered good and evil before the player has a chance to decide that for themselves.

Some things can be made sense of, however. For instance, Lawful and Chaotic can be considered from one's goal, such as following the will of gods and the undead (lawful) or resisting that will. Good and Evil can be considered from the covenant's methods: sacrifice the good of others for your goal, or sacrifice the good of yourself.

With these ideas in mind, the chart fits quite well if you rethink some of the placements, in many cases switching "Lawful/Chaotic" with "Good/Evil". For instance, Princess guard aren't concerned with methods; their goal is to protect Gwynevere (and/or her ideals). Thus, Lawful Neutral fits better than Neutral Good. Gravelord Servent in contrast is not concerned with the will of Gods and Undead. Their methods, however, are brutal and merciless. Thus, Neutral Evil makes more sense than Lawful Evil.

Of course, this still doesn't make this system 100% accurate, but again, that isn't the point. It's supposed to be familiar and make sense to those who are new to the game. It's expected that anybody who plays the game for very long will realize that this system doesn't describe the covenants perfectly. For those people, we have more in-depth pages on each covenant, detailing exactly their ins and outs.

I can't think of a single person off the top of my head that falls under the Lawful/Good/Etc chart that I know in real life because that is generally not how real people are.  Just like how I feel in Dark Souls they just don't apply at all.  There are many interpretations of things, Darkmoon punish the guilty but they are also reducing the amount of humanity in the world.  Dark Wraith are killing without end but also spreading around humanity.  Things are way to subjective for there to be set good and evil in Dark Souls, it's the same issue with people saying there is a good ending or a bad ending.  It really depends on how you view things and that chart puts up notions of objectivity where there is none at all.  Nito could be seen as a god so the Gravelords could be seen as lawful, there is nothing known about Nito being against or for order.  If anything the closest thing to the gravelords would be true neutral since there is next to nothing known about their intentions.

I know people who consider the god factions "evil", in that they perpetuate the reign of tyrants. The wiki would have you believe that point of view is objectively incorrect.

@Dalsio, if you want a way to summarize the covenants in a few words and introduce them to new players, why not just describe what they do? For instance:

Way of White: Serve the gods and help other players
Darkwraiths: Serve a primordial serpent and invade other players
Darkmoons: "When I invade, I invade for queen and country" (Maybe not)

As long as people know if they're going to be helping or hurting other players and why, that gives them all they need to make a first-glance moral impression, without any need to talk down to them.