September 22, 2026: a clean design decision with quotes attached. Asked about shared mob tagging, Classic developer Josh Greenfield answered (via Icy Veins PopTop): no shared tagging, because "it is extremely important to our social pillar to maintain some of this friction." Holding the line, on the record.
The alternative has a name now: Recent Allies. Players naturally re-encounter the same people day after day; the system surfaces that familiarity (a different colored name for yesterday's groupmate), so the second meeting starts warmer than the first and the third starts warmer still. Overlapping systems by design: Familiar Faces for phasing, Recent Allies for memory, both aimed at small-server feel inside mega-rulesets.
Filed next to yesterday's friction piece: this is the same thesis (friction as community technology) stated as engineering. Whether engineered serendipity survives contact with 8,500 concurrent strangers is the open question.
SOURCES: Aggrend X posts (via Icy Veins PopTop, Sep 21).