I have a few items in my org file that are tagged "ARCHIVE". They show up grey in my emacs window.
If I sit the cursor on the * bullet and hit TAB, I get a message that says "Subtree is archived and stays closed. Use <C-tab> to cycle it anyway." However, if I sit the cursor on the actual headline and hit TAB, I get the same message, but the subtree is also expanded. I don't recall offhand how it worked in 8.2.x, but I'm pretty sure it refused to expand the subtree no matter where the cursor was. --hymie!