Posted by pixiestixy on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 - 40 Comments
Tags: abbreviations, courtesy, gaming terms, glassary, instance names, keeping things straight, lingo, newbie, phrase, terminology
We’ve all been there. Those early days when we first start playing a game, and it seems that we know less about it than everyone around us. The gameplay mechanics are totally new, maybe the controls are something unlike what we’ve ever used before, and it’s sometimes hard to find a place to even begin to learn how to get around menus and customization. But for me, one of the most alienating aspects of this delicate time period boils down to lingo.
When it came to WoW, I was one of the last among my RL friends to start playing. Now I don’t need babying, but I did appreciate the occasional explanation of one of any number of 3-letter combinations common to WoW. Let’s face it: for a game that can fill an entire glossary, there’s a lot of terminology. And when multiple terms are grouped together, it can be perplexing for a new player to discern what it all means.
With a little help along the way, soon the game became second nature. I knew the difference between BoE and BoP (not to be confused with Bot). I could find my way to RFC, RFD and RFK, and once inside I could pwn on trash without anyone knowing I was a newb. Just don’t ask me the difference between CoA, CoD, CoEx, CoR or any of those other warlock spells. I still get them confused!
But I can see it going an entirely different direction. If I had started out playing and joined a guild of non-RL friends who only laughed or scoffed at my lack of knowledge, I also could have just decided the game wasn’t for me. And I’d never have gotten to the point of watching the Project Lore crew tearing it up in Naxx and knowing enough to laugh along when Alex joyfully proclaims, “Now this is what we call crowd control!”
There’s a lot of lingo that overlaps with gaming in general, so anyone with experience with other RPGs, especially MMOs, has a bit of an advantage starting out in WoW. But try to remember: there are tons of other RL people on the same server with you, and not every one is going to be a lingo expert right away. Don’t potentially ruin someone else’s gaming experience by being an ass. Just like with me, babying isn’t required. But a shred of common courtesy goes a long way.
So do you all remember your first days of WoW? What abbreviations or terminology tripped you up at first, or still puzzles you now? I still can’t keep track of all the dungeons, but then again there’s still plenty that I haven’t been in yet. Leveling FTW!
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By Ditz on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 10:44 am
I get tripped up by any Abbreviations of any Dungeons that i ahven’t done before or any abilities iof a class I haven’t been before
By Ghiki on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 11:23 am
First time in Orgrimmar as a lost level 9 Troll shaman, and all I see is:
LW LFW, WTS 20x[Item] WTT [Item 2] for [Item 3]
I think it was safe to say I was completely lost.
By saxonn on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 11:36 am
I agree with Ghiki going into Silvermoon for the first time with my now deleted hunter was almost mind boggleing, even though i had played Guild Wars prior to starting WoW. Then there was all the dungeon names, I was once but in a grp for mana tombs at lvl 20 cause i thought they needed a main tank and dps for another instance. The one I still remember mose about all the abbreviations was when I was first getting into all the gems with my pally and someone in my guild posted: “LF JC”, in trade chat and I asked over vent “why are you looking for jesus????” I got ripped on for that one for months lol
By saxonn on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Oh that and OMW puzzled my for a long time before I got a guild. I only got it when someone wrote out the whole thing lol
By icedtrip on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Mine definitely dealt with BG’s. First for AB and later for EotS when I would see someone yell out “inc LM” or “inc BE”. I caught onto LM, BE, GM, BS, etc pretty quick, but could not figure out what “inc” meant for the longest time.
As for dungeons, I still don’t know half of them. Mainly just the ones I have been in and a few of the more popular ones.
And of course, VC for deadmines? For someone fresh to the game, you can understand RFC, WC, etc, but VC initially just didn’t make sense until you actually played it.
By Kalgorn on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Ya, i can remember when leveling my Hunter in my early days of WoW. I was still learning names of places and spells and the odd language spoken in Trade chat.
I had picked up a quest somewhere that told me i had to go deliver something to someone in Thunder Bluff. I asked in trade where it was and all i got was
“…..”
“You’re joking right? Tell me he’s not serious’
‘Newb!”
Thankfully there are some kind people who play on my server and they were able to help me out. Even now, i sometimes don’t know what something will mean. Sometimes i’ll get RFK confused with RFC.
I’ll never forget the first instance i did. It was Wailing Caverns. We were in there for hours. And i kept getting yelled at for doing things i didn’t know i was doing. Like a mage would sheep on mob and i would use Volley. Of course, that breaks sheep. So i’d get told ‘No AoE’s!”
No idea what AoE ment. Haha. Good times….
By 5oren on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
I’d played WoW for 2-3 years before i found out what mp5 was :S
By PatrickD on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
It took me a while to figure out that PST wasn’t “Pacific Standard Time”. I thought people were saying what time zone they were in for some reason. (…and I was playing on a Pacific server.) I’m still not sure why it’s a “tell”, but don’t really care either.
I’ll admit that after 4+ years, there are still a lot of abbreviations I don’t know. As a casual player, it’s not a huge priority for me to know.
By icedtrip on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
@PatrickD
I didn’t know either until fairly recently. It means “Please send tell”.
I found this out as I saw more and more people using it when trying to get raids together to complete the “For the Alliance” and “For the Horde” achievements. I knew it meant to contact them, but didn’t know why.
By Zvonimir on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Of course, playing on a PvP server, the first new world I added to my MMORPG vocabulary was “gank”. Surely I had no idea what it meant at first, but trust me, I learned it the hard way.
By Niimrod on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
@Icedtrip
Pst (with how ever ss s you want) is onamatapaea (sp) - the noice made to gain someone’s attention before whispering. PST is indeed Standard time.
By Shoogs on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
what the hell IS mp5, lmao
By Shoogs on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
*besides a sub-machinegun manufactured by Heckler & Koch
By Sjof on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
mana per 5
By Cozmus on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
LOL at “being an ass”.
I quickly learned that being an ass was almost a requirement for most WoW players. I salute those few that aren’t.
By Kagitaar on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
MP5 means mana per 5 seconds, aka your mana regeneration rate in combat.
By Johhnyboy on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
yeah be an asshole.. ppl will be scared of you and respect you and if you fuck up they’ll be too scared to yell at you….
becides if worst comes to worst just switch realms
By Alternate on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
I got lucky, mostly, when I began to play WoW. I started literally four weeks before Naxx was originally introduced. My brother got me into it and I started to play, thinking, “Hey, its a fun game!” Then I get to Darnie (made a hunter as my first char), and I decide to look all over, and I notice that theres more gray letters in my chat screen. So immediately I think to myself, “Dang, General Chat is busy here in Darnie … Note for others, don’t voice this in the trade chat XD. As for the acronym’s of WoW, I learned mostly by asking my brother and his friend, but for some of them, I just wasn’t even trying to learn. First trip into Deadmines was when figured out that when you play a warrior, when they say to keep your BS up, they mean your Battle Shout, not your Blacksmithing, so I naturally, and innocently, told them that it would be in my way. Needless to say they were A) pricks that decided to pick on the noob, or B) kids who like to laugh at new players. Either way I had to whisper my brother and ask him “wth was going on.” He filled me in that when playing a warrior, BS is Battle Shout. Before the warrior, I had a pally, so he was also a Blacksmith, so thats how I learnt that bit of info on what BS meant.
By Ivan on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
At first I started playing on private servers with my friend. There was a TONS AND TONS of lingo for me, because I’m Russian. I just didn’t look at chat, because if I saw the lingo discussion in it, ny only thoughts were “Ok, I daon’t care about LF GD (good donor on private server) for BT, I should ask my friend”. His thoughts were the same, and the decision we made was to go to our English teacher and to ask her. I don’t know what did she think about us when we ased ” What is QQ, what is BRB, kk, DND…” The first thing i understood were the meaning of WTF =) After it WTB and WTS and the meaning of the word…anvil (don’t think I’m an idiot!) because I wanted to buy it ^___^. After this “research” I’ve found PL and glossary…and I was singin “Haliluya (I don’t know the right spelling)”
By Stevo on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
pst means please send tell??
haha, i thought it had to do with “whispering”, ya know, like pssssst haha, I’ve been playing for three years and just found that out
By Rikaku on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Being someone from classic WoW, I still get confused when people say they’re “LFG DM” and they don’t mean Dire Maul. ‘Why, back in my day, we called Deadmines, VC’.
Originally I had to learn VC though, as it didn’t occur to me Deadmines could be shorthanded from ‘Van Cleef”.
I still get RFK RFC confused just because I’ve never ran them.
First time I saw “LFG SM”, I thought it was an RP-group that was looking for some S&M O_o
By HerofTime on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Oh god i remember that time…. I didnt know what a “tank” was….. but now im tearing down 25 man naxx, OS 2d and 10 man Maly like i’ve been doing it my whole life, so yeah…. A little friendly education goes a long way in the unfriendly world of Warcraft.
By Jeff on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
[quote]Mine definitely dealt with BG’s. First for AB and later for EotS when I would see someone yell out “inc LM” or “inc BE”. I caught onto LM, BE, GM, BS, etc pretty quick, but could not figure out what “inc” meant for the longest time.[/quote]
This has totally lost me…
By Loki on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Luckily when I started playing it was in a guild made by people I already knew from a FPS gaming community. I’d never played a MMO or RPG before and no idea what anything meant. The class acronym’s still confuse the heck out of me. I didn’t run any instances until SM and still remember being whispered “Are you a tank?” and answering “No, I’m a warrior.”.
By Kimeghale on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Mats. The aconmyms have not been much of a problem for me, but when i saw mats i thought of mats like on the outside of a door at a house. However now luckily I now know it is materials
By oaky on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
i allways got FTW and WTF messed up and i was always like WTF is UBRS i thought that was a game expansion for sims untill i started raiding it every saterday for months until naxx came out and rag was downable i palyed ever sense the beta and i was unforentuly still no matter when the game is the slowest fucking leveler in the whole damn server even if i started at level 79 there would be a level 1 that would beat me to 80
By Kerth on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Took me a long time to find out what HOTS were. Playing a druid everyone told me to put HOTS on them. Then they would Ask For a BREZ when i failed to put HOTS on them. Also still dont know what ZMOG Means
By Alayea on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
When I first started playing World of Warcraft, I wasn’t really tripped up by what the acronyms for spells and abilities meant since I either soloed or got ran through a dungeon (had to learn what “instance” was, lol). What really got me was the trade chat, as I kept seeing all these short-hand phrases until my eyes started glossing over it. Even with the help of my brothers — who were already experienced players — I still kept forgetting the jargons’ definitions until they finally became second nature to me.
Same went for the battlegrounds, too. It wasn’t until shortly before WotLK that I finally found out what “omw” meant. (I kept thinking, “Why is this person saying ‘oh my word’?”)
By aadjed on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
I was pretty much a solo player, not paying much attention to gen or trade chat. It wasnt untill like lvl27-28 when i met someone doing the same quest as me and we partnered up. added each other to friend list and played together since. he introduced to the many more opportunities wow had to offer besides running around and killing monsters (mobs lol). every thing that i didnt know, i asked him. It wasnt untill much later i found an acronym list on wowwiki.
By Mvprat on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 4:39 am
Instead of LOL i use LQTM as we all should cause it’s the truth LQTM = Laugh Quietly To Myself
-Mvprat
-Commander Tsunami Ysera
-Always looking for great players
-http://tsunamiysera.guildomatic.com <–Apply here
By Dulica on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 9:11 am
my warrior finally hit 70 the other night, and I still get confused on the lingo. My guild helps me out, but I still dont understand all the d-bags that rip on people who ask a question. It takes less time to just type an answer than it does to come up with a witty/nasty/mean comeback!
I’d love it if wow was just a little nicer at time.
By Krowtz on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 10:22 am
The new one I see now is OOM which I’m pretty sure refers to “out of mana”. I do feel kinda weird now watching trade chat and understanding 90% of what people are talking about cause it would make absolutely no sense if I was trying to explain it to a wow laymen.
By Kalgorn on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 11:17 am
I don’t know any of the acronyms for PvP but ive learned all the ones you see most frequently in trade chat and in raids or instances. Im just a PvE person. PvP doesn’t interest me. So, that’d naturally be why i dont know many. I do know what gank means since that’s all that happens to me when im in a BG. lol
By Jeff on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Might it be helpful for those with the power to do so to add the previously mention acronyms to the Glossary section &/or add a atg/link to said section in this ‘thread’…?
I still don’t know what LM, BE, GM & BS mean… or even if it’s that vital for me TO know what they mean.
By Rhea on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
@ Jeff those are names of places in Arathi Basin battleground, Lumber Mill, Gold Mine, BlackSmith. BE referres to a base in another battleground Eye of the Storm, the Blood Elf tower. inc is a warning meaning players of the other faction are incomming.
So, only useful to know if you plan to spend time in those battlegrounds.
By Diogo on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 4:34 am
i’ve been playing for about 3 years now, and 1 thing that i’ve learned about WoW is that u’ll always learn something new, so i dont agree on insulting a player just because they dont know simple things, we all have been there, so instead of being an ass i prefer to explain things to a new player. who knows he might turn out to be a great player some day
By Blight on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 7:50 am
Kerth brings up a valid point, and that the slang version of these acronyms. So not only do we have the acronyms, but there’s slang like ZOMG, noob, lawl and pwn that people who are new to the game just might not get at all. I usually get by on guessing what the person means in the acronym, normally I figure out what their intent is (seems like they are heading toward our objective) and figure out the rest from there.
However, if I can’t figure something out, and I see it often enough,I’ll typically use teh interwebs to find out instead of asking in chat, cause I don’t want to be branded a newb, and generally, the infromation is readily available with a simple google search.
ZOMG is basically OMG (Oh My God) but… a slang version, as adding Z’s to words is an internet meme. I also notice that meme isn’t in the Glossary on PL so:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
I realized one day when talking with one of my WoW friends who is relatively new to the game that the phrase I just typed in was probably over their head. I forget what I said, but sometimes I realize it’s hard to explain things concisely without using some common WoW terms.
Oh, and the more people who know that PST means Please Send Tell, the less likely I’ll see “please pst” in Trade.
I did get laughed at once though by someone I was in a party with when I typed “LOL”, and he replied, “lol caps”. I explained to him that it was grammatically correct to capitalize acronyms. He replied “lol”.
By Thrmo on Saturday, May 9th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
@PatrickD
I’m pretty sure that the “T” in PST is from EverQuest or an older similar game. I know for sure in the EverQuest games (EQ and EQ2) the whisper function of WoW is called a “Tell”. It works in the exact same way its just called a tell and I would not be surprised if a lot of lingo used today comes from older games.
By Ada on Sunday, May 10th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
FTW, WTS, and WTB, didn’t understand them. I thought FTW meant F the world, lol.
By Sunstraid on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Ye just like me ^^.When i first saw mats i thought that guy was looking for pets xD as in muts.