World of Warcraft and the Case Against Open Tagging

WoW's Lead Content Designer explains why WoW isn't jumping on the bandwagon.
(1)

Oondasta will be a mighty challenge in WoW's Patch 5.2.

Last year saw the rise of several innovative features in MMORPGs, but few held as much promise for future games as open tagging, which is perhaps best described as the chance for every player who participates in a fight to receive experience and loot regardless of whether they're grouped or not, or was the first character to hit an enemy. (In many MMOs, such as World of Warcraft, only the first person to deal damage or "tag" an enemy will earn loot and experience from the kill, even if another player winds up doing most of the damage to it.) It made the biggest splash in Guild Wars 2, where it encouraged cooperation in the many dynamic events scattered throughout the leveling experience. By year's end, other MMORPGs had incorporated the concept, most notably the new expansions for Rift and Lord of the Rings Online. And yet the genre's dominant game, World of Warcraft, resisted embracing the concept fully. Let's find out why.

Open tagging worked particularly well with LOTRO's mounted combat.

Mists of Pandaria did introduce some concessions, such as open tagging for named enemy quest targets, and Patch 5.2, scheduled for release in the coming weeks, extends the concept to world bosses--provided the boss was tapped by a member of your own faction. But that, according to World of Warcraft Lead Content Designer Ion Hazzikostas, is enough. Hazzikostas doesn't foresee a future where open tagging extends to every enemy NPC in WoW, partly because he believes it ruins some of the social appeal of playing an MMO. world of warcraft gold

Friendly Rivalries

"It can be frustrating to compete with fellow players for loot rights." "I think all of us who play MMOs realize that it can be frustrating to compete with fellow players for loot rights or tap rights on a mob," Hazzikostas said, "but at the same time, there are important social interactions that come out of those moments." Having to compete with a fellow player from the same faction, he says, lends some weight to encounter that they might not otherwise have and occasionally, for better or for worse, leads to player interaction. wow power leveling


Even if it's just grumbling about fighting another flying bug.

It also sometimes leads to abuse of the system. "Part of the concern with open, free-for-all, open-tapping is that a lot of the game becomes more about tapping everything and tagging everything a little bit, especially when other players have already tapped them" he said. "Thirty seconds later, your quest completes because the other people killed them all. That's not an ideal way to feel like you're engaging in combat." Guild Wars 2 requires a considerable degree of participation to get credit, but I'd seen evidence of Hazzikostas' concerns myself during my recent adventures in Rift's Storm Legion expansion, where the comparatively lax open tagging rules resulted in fellow players tossing a couple of arrows or spells on the enemies I was fighting for credit.

sell  rs cheap powerleveling     buy diablo gold