Why do people hate shared tagging so much if the idea of the open world in Forever is ‘teamwork and collaboration’, and shared tagging guarantees that teamwork and collaboration happen?
The only answers I’ve been able to think of as to why people just absolutely hate the system so much are:
They Don't Understand Its Benefits
Shared Tagging/Looting of Quest Items means that anyone can hit a mob and get credit, regardless of being solo or grouped. It means you don’t have to compete with people to get your quests done, you can work with them without having to party up. It creates collaboration without the extra step of having to invite people, and then ONLY being able to help 4 other people max.
Bots/Exploiters
They think it’s going to be abused by bots/exploiters (what system isn’t, honestly). This falls on Community reporting OR more importantly, Blizzard vigilance and enforcement.
“It isn't Classic“
This feels like the thinnest logic to me. Forever isn’t classic. It’s not even vanilla. It’s a new thing meant to last forever, and meant to be about community collaboration. So why not have the single greatest feature for community collaboration in the open world? Sure, you don’t have to post “inv?” “need X?” and hope for an invite, or start spam inviting everyone around you, but neither of those are real social interactions. You aren’t talking to people. You’re pinging them with a transactional prompt.
“Socializing is the entire point of Classic“
You can have shared tagging and still be social. You can still talk to people around you while you kill mobs without being in a party. I think people are afraid to admit that if you remove the very weak social aspect of asking for invites and then throwing in a “I need x more” “you done?” “gg” during/at the end, it kills WoW. It doesn’t. It removes very small, basically meaningless hallway conversations at work. It’s like saying you can’t have the amazing flexibility and quality of life of working from home because you’ll lose water cooler chats at the office.
“Competing for things is the spirit of Classic/necessary friction“
If we’re meant to be building a big Forever community, the last thing I would imagine people want to do is resent their fellow players for all the competition. I would certainly rather have positive feelings towards the people I’m questing around than be upset they took a quest item while I was fighting two mobs to clear it out. Or sit around bored watching people spam tag macros while I feebly try to get hits in on things without an instant tag skill. If nobody is inviting or accepting invites, you’re stuck solo.
“Classic is a social/team game, party up! Talk to people!“
Some people just prefer to play solo. Or have social anxiety, or other such limiting factors. That’s okay. WoW Forever should be just as much for them as anyone else. Open world tagging just means people who can’t or don’t want to socialize can still engage with a great game, contribute to an open, vibrant world, and not hurt your experience at all by having theirs.
37 Likes
“The only answers I’ve been given as to why people think I’m an outlier in my desire for shared tagging are the following 21 good answers…”
33 Likes
Not an outlier, plenty of support for it outside the andy community. And I gave reasoning why each of those arguments against it don’t work.
6 Likes
People who prefer to play solo can still play solo. Nothing wrong with more things to encourage grouping. No one is forcing you to group. I do think competition for resources makes a little more sense from a faction v faction standpoint but still just like go out in the world and group up, it won’t kill you.
6 Likes
Because I don’t like it and a lot of other people don’t as well.
If it’s a “vote” (Which it isn’t but for the sake of argument) the people who vote no are under no obligation to justify why.
8 Likes
Because Classic Andys will oppose literally any QoL improvement that deviates from the broken mess that Vanilla is. They’ll start foaming at the mouth and screaming “GO BACK TO RETAIL!” the moment you suggest changing anything, no matter how much sense it makes.
39 Likes
Which is exactly why blizzard should never listen to them 
20 Likes
On the flipside if your take on vanilla is that it’s a broken mess perhaps a reimagined vanilla WoW isn’t meant for you.
27 Likes
Imo, i think the people who hate the idea of shared tagging are the ones who get off on kill stealing from everyone and laughing at the players who can’t get a single tag in edgewise. The only reason they oppose it is that they love to grief others.
25 Likes
shared tagging is way more gray loot/raw gold for everyone → which is more raw gold income into game → worse economy
10 Likes
So give only one person loot but everyone kill credit for quests/quest items.
8 Likes
For me shared tagging falls in the same bucket as world quest boss ride-by tapping in retail. Feels cheap and makes players treat each other like unwitting assistant-bots.
I’d like to see the mob competition issues fixed, but it’d be better to treat the cause than put a band-aid on the symptom. The only reason it’s a problem in Forever is because layers are way too packed. It’d mostly be solved by “just” cutting the layer pop cap down to like 20% of what it is presently.
27 Likes
I mean why even have a world you share with other people if stuff like tagging doesn’t even matter? Stuff like this gives zero incentive to group, everyone might as well just be an NPC. It simply has no place in a game like Forever.
27 Likes
The flip side of that is how it is now: still no one groups and they just race to out-douche each other.
18 Likes
Agreed. Or the people who think tedious outdated systems are compelling aspects of gameplay.
“Why have a shared world where I have to share with other people instead of something being mine”??
5 Likes
I can take or leave faction tagging.
1 Like
[Old man voice]: why, back in my day, prairie dogs had FOUR polygons! Count em. FOUR. These young whippersnappers don’t need more than FOUR polygons for a groundhog!
3 Likes
Back in my day we didn’t get a stable server until nearly a month into the game! If we were lucky! These kids need more random crashes and 30 minute rollbacks!
4 Likes
I see this as a huge problem mostly when the game first comes out. When the beta first comes out, it was pretty bad, obviously. I am leveling a forever character right now and don’t really have much of a problem with this. I can get mobs and do quests just fine.
Ultimately this is a version of classic, not necessarily vanilla, but is catering towards that classic crowd. They mention this heavily in the announcements and interviews.
It’s just change should not be rushed. I don’t really think shared tagging is the solution for this specific game just in my personal opinion, but it doesn’t hurt to consider options as the game matures more.
1 Like
Based on the crowding with just the beta launch in early zones, actual launch is going to be a nightmare. And that’s not counting any new zone/content drops that people will flock to to see the new content in the future… This is just a healthy change IMO to make the world feel more collaborative and less competitive between same-faction players.
6 Likes