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Role Playing (Games) It's funny. Laugh.

MMOG Lingo Twists Tongues 37

Posted by Zonk from the lvl-55-pally-lfg-brd-sm-pst dept.
The Guardian Gamesblog takes a look at the sometimes confusing lexicon used by MMOG players. Aleks was inspired by this post from the MemoryCard blog about acquiring a drop in FFXI. From the Guardian post: "Certainly, I predict that the word 'avatar' will be on the tips of tongues, if only so that tech journalists can stop adding 'the identity that represents you online' every time it's included in an article. If anything, that definition should be added to the OED along with the others: 1. Hindu Myth. The descent of a deity to the earth in an incarnate form. 1784 SIR W. JONES in Asiat. Res. I. 234 The ten Avatárs or descents of the deity, in his capacity of Preserver. 1858 BEVERIDGE Hist. India II. IV. ii. 28 The fifth avatar, called Varuna, because in it Vishnu assumed the form of a dwarf." On a related note, the MMOG commentary blog n3rfed has begun posting again after a leave of absence. Cosmik reintroduces himself with a 'We Didn't Start the Fire'-esque recap of recent events.
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MMOG Lingo Twists Tongues More

MMOG Lingo Twists Tongues

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  • The french dictionary has it already (Score:4, Interesting)

    by theefer ( 467185 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @02:34PM (#14394484) Homepage

    If anything, that definition should be added to the OED along with the others: [...]

    Heh for once, the french dictionary seems to have adopted it before the others:

    AVATAR n. m. [...] 4. Représentation virtuelle créée par un internaute pour évoluer dans le cyberespace. [Virtual representation created by someone on the internet to move in cyberspace.] (Petit Robert 2006).

    Neat.

  • There are plenty of generic acronyms used both in instant messaging and online gaming, but a bunch of other ones are game specific. I don't really see them as a barrier to entry. After playing World of Warcraft for awhile you learn what UBRS is and why people are "LFM for UBRS have key" in "IF" all the time.
    Besides the acronyms, you have your leet-speak and purposeful misspellings (pwned, teh, pron etc.). Every once in awhile a word is coined that really is necessary online and describes something you only
    • Don't you mean "LFM 3m UBRS have tank, need DPS & key, 1 blue/1 set - PST"

      (Sry, had to wave my epeen while afk on the gryphon from a scholo run to the IF AH to check get some LBS & GEE...)

      • I have no idea what you said, so I'll turn in any geek cards I still have. Can I at least have an English translation for reference and regret? ;)
        • Don't you mean "LFM 3m UBRS have tank, need DPS & key, 1 blue/1 set - PST"

          (Sry, had to wave my epeen while afk on the gryphon from a scholo run to the IF AH to check get some LBS & GEE...)

          I said...

          "LFM 3m UBRS have tank, need DPS & key, 1 blue/1 set - PST" = "I'm forming a group to play in the Upper Blackrock Spire dungeon. I have a warrior and healers, but I need some people who do damage as well as the key to get in. Furthermore, the rules for loot distribution are that people are limited to o
          • Do people really speak like that in MMORPGs? The closest to that sort of thing I've played was MUDs years ago, and people whilst not spelling every word out exactly typed out actual full sentences with minimal abbreviations. But I suppose that sort of game encourages fast skillful typing, rather than clicking and drooling.

  • Vamana vs Varuna (Score:3, Informative)

    by dodobh ( 65811 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2006 @02:38PM (#14394518) Homepage
    Vamana is the 5th avatar of Vishnu (Matsya - the fish, kurma -- the turtle, varaha -- the boar, narsimha -- the half man, half lion beast, vamana -- the dwarf, Parshuram, Ram, Krishna and the Buddha.

    Varuna is the lord of water.
  • can anyone tell me what the heck i just read?
    • I agree, the summary is completely worthless once you get past the colon. Replace that with a period and then tack on that added "Oh hey blog blah" sentence from the end onto it and you've got a summary.

  • Ninja and Gank (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jlavarj ( 541976 )
    I have already insinuated the mmorpg concepts of ninja and gank into various offices where I work. I honestly think Avatar will be one of the last words to make it into common speech. Toon is much more commonly used. Example: Dude, you ninja'd my bagel (you took the bagel that I wanted without a fair contest to see who should get the bagel). Example: Did you hear that Larry got ganked by IT? (While Larry was working on an important project, the IT department blamed him for a mishap, causing management t

  • From TFA:

    Then I went to Pashow, leveled my NPC a bit...

    That's a nifty trick.

    • FFXI introduced an "Adventuring Fellow" you can gain by completing the "Fellowship" quest, basically you receive a magical earring you can use to "summon" your fellow. They have all the abilities of a normal player character however they are not directly player controlled, they're controlled by AI and mimic the actions you take so they are NPCs. They level when they gain experience, you can tell them what role to play so they can melee fight or magically heal, etc.

      It gets rediculously hard for non-pet ownin
  • I find the new lingo in WoW a little bit of an annoying phenomena. I've been playing WoW for a year, and I still hear stuff in the game that I don't recognize. Everything is concatenated and abbreviated, and to a newbie it must sound like these guys have been playing forever and are too tired of retyping long strings of text. But the reality is, it's just the same old in-group/out-group language evolution that occurs. And I find myself falling into the same folly.

    First, if someone mentions a term that I don
    • Don't feel too bad. I had to Google Leeroy Jenkins before I "got" what it was about. I kept seeing it pop up everywhere out of context, but somehow never saw the source. Maybe it's because I don't play WoW.

      Now _that's_ something that makes _no_ sense if you aren't on the inside. Some nerd types up "LEEEEEEEERROY JENNNNKINS," and it's just completely opaque--is it a battlecry? This is especially true when it's just thrown in a sig or something. How does the average Internet user google that, anyhow?

      Fra
    • "So in summary, as soon as members of the WoW community learn new lingo, they bring it into use in order to fit-in, and not because it's easier to use."

      I don't think this is entirely true. People (myself included) use abbreviations like LFG, LFM, WTS etc. because they are quicker to type. Just like zone/dungeon abbreviations such as IF and UBRS.
      Other types of abbreviations and terms are more likely to be used to "insult n00bs" who are not part of the hip-know-all-the-acronyms crowd. A fairly recent example
  • I wonder if someone can explain this one to me.

    I've been playing City of Heroes for a few months now and in the past have played Dark Age of Camelot.

    In the super group most my characters belong to other members tend to use 'kk' in place of 'ok'. I never asked anyone why they were using that. Maybe it's actually in widespread use in MMORPGs and I've just never run into it before. Anyone know why kk would be used in place of ok? It's the same number of characters so it couldn't be short hand for ok. At
    • "Bio" means bio-break, i.e. a break forced upon you by biology like the need to take a piss, or eat something. I think it is used to say "Hey look, I have to go AFK but it isn't my fault!" to counteract the guilt that might be felt by leaving your buddies for a while. "I would play 24 straight hours a day, but my pitiful body lets me down again - got to go rub ointment on my bedsores!" ;-)
    • KK has been used for ages. I remember using it when I was playing my friends Doom on 14.4 modems, and I'm sure we weren't the first. It's just easier to type kk rather than ok.

    • Re:kk instead of ok...? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by terpl ( 897171 )
      This one I know... It dates back to the initial beat testing of EQ. In it the chat window had an ugly bug where it would delete the last character in your text. So if you said 'hello' they'd see 'hell'. End result of that was a few new conventions in MUD speak including 'ok' being truncated to 'k' then to 'kk' to ensure that you group would see the first 'k'. Stuck around ever since.
  • Certainly, I predict that the word 'avatar' will be on the tips of tongues, if only so that tech journalists can stop adding 'the identity that represents you online'

    What was ever wrong with 'character'?
    • In World of Warcraft and City of Heroes, I don't think I've ever seen a player refer to their character as an avatar in game. The most common terms are main, alt or toon - and occasionally using the term character. Main being the main one you play, alt being your alternate character and toon just being quicker to type than character. No one seems to use char anymore, although this abbreviation was commonly used back in the old days and pen and paper gaming.
      I don't like the term avatar, because it implies th

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