The WoW Dragonflight Primal Storms pre-patch event hasn’t exactly gotten off to a flying (ha ha) start. The mob tagging for the MMO‘s all-new XP-centric event has left players out in the cold, as players are swarming the newly opened rifts to take down the terrors beyond, leaving no enemies for other adventurers to kill.
For those blissfully unaware, mob tagging refers to the idea of attacking the numerous (somewhat violent) NPCs that you find wandering around Azeroth. In retail WoW, up to five players can target a single group of enemies and reap the rewards for killing it. When a mob has already been tagged (also known as ‘tapped’) by enough players, its name above the action bar will go grey, indicating that you will not benefit from helping kill it.
At the moment, the Dragonflight pre-patch has unleashed swathes of enemies to help players gear up to level 70, the game’s new highest level. The problem is, if you’re on a high population server, hundreds of other players are descending on the four different rifts that spawn said beasties, meaning you’re fighting relentlessly to try and tap a mob. This isn’t made any easier by the fact that mob tagging is no longer faction specific.
As players try (and fail) to accrue some extra XP coming into the next WoW expansion, the official forums are ablaze with comments asking for some sort of change to the current tagging system.
“Fix tagging NOW!” reads one angry thread. “For the love of God, please lift tagging restrictions for these Primal Storms. I can’t get a single tag to complete my quests or even collect essences. This is absurd. Please, Blizzard. I can’t even tag the same things as people on my own faction.”
“Yeah tags should go away for this event, all I see is grey before me,” echoes another, with a second response reading “the tag limits should never have been applied to the invasion mobs.”
An equally irate post reads “my suggestion is do not attempt [Primal Storms] on high or full Servers. You will not have a fun time. Group tagging and opposing faction tagging mobs is currently controlling the majority of the spawns in the one rift area that everyone has been funnelled into, into three zones across the world.
“I have attempted twice now to get the fire elemental boss and before my hunter can even get off an Arcane Shot due to the incredible lag they will die from the 40 Dracthyr who all cast the blue beam of death.” A final thread repeats this sentiment, commenting “really Blizzard? Tagging? So awesome how I literally can’t do anything in this event.”
As someone who switches between Holy and Shadow Priest, being a ranged caster with a long windup for certain abilities means I have missed out on many a mob before. Given both the tagging issue and the insane lag spikes because of too many players gathering in one place, it sounds like I’ll be giving the Primal Storms event a wide berth – and that’s not exactly how I wanted my Dragonflight adventure to begin.
While I’m aware it’s worth fighting through the chaos because of my WoW Dragonflight alpha preview experience, all of this is a little disheartening. If you too plan to sit out the event, check out our rundown of the World of Warcraft Dragonflight talents system, as well as our recommendations for the best WoW addons to make your journey a little smoother.