MMORPG Lingo

This page was created for anyone that is completely new to MMORPGs. After having played MMORPGs for the past 15 years I have noticed there are quite a few words that we use in game that no one on the outside would even remotely understand. If you don't believe me, try it! Tell your friend that's never played an MMORPG before "Yo, we sent our tank in way too early, he couldn't keep agro so the dps kept pulling the boss off him. The healer went oom early so that was no help and we even accidentally pulled a pack of adds with no CC to mez them. We did manage to kill the boss though, even though our ranged dps Dc'd cause an addon was acting up...." Anyway, you get the point. We use a lot of acronyms in MMORPGs.

I'm sure I am missing a few acronyms throughout this guide, but hey! We're not all perfect here... If you manage to think of one that I am missing please feel free to email me. My email address is in the "Submit a Guide" link a the bottom of each page.

DPS - Stands for Damage Per Second. DPS is used to describe any class that does damage.

Ranged DPS - As you could imagine by using your brain, Ranged DPS is simply just DPS that is ranged.

Melee DPS - DPS that does only melee damage.

Tank - A tank is a class/player that takes all of the damage for a group and holds agro on all of the monsters.

Agro - Also known as threat, is what keeps mobs attacking you over others. High agro means the mobs will be focusing their attacks on you, low agro means the mobs will not be attacking you.

Healer - A player or class that heals others. His or her primary purpose is to keep their group alive.

AoE or AE - Area of Effect. Both damage and heals can be AoE abilties. AoE describes anything that effects an entire area instead of just a single player.

AFK - Away From Keyboard. This means that the player is not as his or her computer and is unable to talk to you.

BRB - Be right back. This should not need further explanation.

LFG - Looking for Group. All that this means is you're looking for other players to group with. To get the most results when announcing you're LFG in general or wherever, say what you're looking for a group for and what you class/spec is. Example, "Level 24 Jedi Consular LFG any instance. Seer spec, meaning I can heal."

LFM - Looking for More. Say you already have a group together and you're looking for more players. Instead of using LFG now, you will want to use LFM. Much like when you announce LFG, being specific will get you the best results. For example, "LF1M (Means Looking for 1 more, it is commonly used like this) any DPS for Lolly Gagging instance."

WTS - Want to Sell. Probably the most commonly used acronym (besides lol of course). This is used anytime you want to sell an item or whatever it is you're selling. When selling an item or whatever it is, it's best to link it after saying WTS. If you're unable to link the item describe it to the best of your ability if you want to sell it as quickly as possible.

WTB - Want to Buy. Just like Want to sell, you will be seeing this very often in general of major cities as well as trade. As I mentioned for WTS, it's important that you mention the item you're looking to buy (duh) and go into details about it or, if at all possible, link the item!

WTT - Want to Trade. This is the most uncommon acronym in the "want to" series. In fact I really only ever see WTT when someone is looking to trade their account for something else.

Farm or Farming - Farm or Farming is when players grind monsters or gather resources in a specific area to either sell or use. Farming is used to describe doing the same monotonous activity again and again and again for money or an item that you need.

BTW - Means By the way. So as an example (BTW, I forgot to tell you that you're an idiot!)

Lul - Means lol. It's just an extremely sarcastic way of saying it. Lul pretty much means your joke was not funny and you should stop talking before you embarrass yourself more.

Bind - Bind is used to describe the area you will return to when you die or use an ability that returns you to your bind point. (Swtor has Quick Travel, WoW has Hearthstones, EQ has Gate... etc etc)

Uber - It means an item is extremely powerful or extremely cool. Uber is prettty much nothing more than an over used adjective anymore.

Alt - Stands for Alternative. Generally used when talking about an alternative character. So if you hear someone say "Hey, can I get that for my alt?" He is most likely talking about acquiring an item and giving it to his alt.

Toon - This stands for character. It was derived from the word cartoon, since a lot of games look cartoony players decided to just start calling their characters toons.

Bio - People say Bio when they need to go to the bathroom. I guess it stands for biological, either way it's a dumb thing to say.

Imba - Short for imbalanced. Imba is pretty much a really dumb thing to say no matter what. Slap the person across the face when they say imba. Tell them to say OP instead and be like everyone else.

OP - Over powered. OP, or, Over powered means something is much more powerful than what it should be. You'll hear tons of kids screaming this acronym all the time because they're too naive to admit they suck when someone kills them.

BRT - Be right there. Self explanatory.

OMW - On my way. Works the same way as Be right there(brt) works.

GTG - Either good to go or got to go.

BoE - Bind on Equip. What this means is an item will become soulbound (Only you will ever be able to use it). After an item becomes soulbound you cannot trade it, and most of the times you cannot even vendor it.

BoP - Bind on Pickup. Pretty much the same thing as BoE but instead this binds to you the second you loot it rather than when you equip it.

Gank - Ganking is when you attack and kill someone with a severly unfair advantage.

EXP or XP - Short for experience.

Corpse Run - The short phrase used in some games to describe having to return to your corpse after you die.

Guilds - A small to large group of players that do things such as raid, pvp and instance together. You'll want to join a guild sometime early on so you don't miss out on the social part of any of these games. Plus if you join a guild, maybe they can help you with any questions you can't find an answer to on my website.

Buffs or Buffing - Buffs greatly improve your character in some way. Either by abilties, attributes, damage, etc etc... Never forget to buff yourself and if you are doing something exceptionally challenging (Either soloing, raiding or grouping) You should probably ask for some buffs.

Debuff - As it sounds, Debuffing is the opposite of buffing. Debuffing will greatly hinder your opponent in whatever way the ability you used effects him. Debuffing is very important and is often the key to defeating harder opponents.

Camping - If someone tells you they are camping or want to camp, it means they're logging off or want to log off.

Botting - Botting is when someone has a program playing the game for them to collect loot or xp while they're not on the computer. This is bannable and if you get caught doing it, which you will if you do it in a public area, you will be banned.

DKP - Dragon Kill Points. DKP is very commonly used in MMORPGs to distribute loot amongst the raid force. I can't go into detail on how they are awarded and things such as that since every guild is different. However I can tell you that DKP originated in EverQuest during I think Velious.

DD - Direct Damage. Very similar to DPS, DD just means that the ability deals direct damage (or class) rather than DoTs... which I will explain a bit next.

DoT- Damage over Time. This is used to describe all abilties that do their damage over time rather than instantly.

Crit - A critical hit. Usually does twice the damage of a regular hit.

GM - Game Master (Or sometimes Guild Master too, but we will explain a Game Master here). A Game Master is someone who works for whatever company owns/made the game you're playing. They are here to assist you incase anything major comes up. Say your character got super stuck and /stuck isn't working or someone is harassing you and your group, kill stealing/griefing you etc etc. You can submit a petition and speak with a GM about this, in which case action will be taken.

Griefer - Someone that Griefs. Grief means trouble or annoyance.

Kill Stealer - Almost the same thing as a griefer, just this is a lot more specific on what the person is doing.

PvP - Stands for Player Versus Player. PvP is one of two ways to play almost all MMORPGS. As you could have guessed this way will be primarily you fighting other players.

PvE - Player Versus Environment. PvE is the second way you are able to play almost all MMORPGS. PvE is the most popular form of playing in MMORPGs; even though PvP has been growing in popularity, PvE still draws in the most players.

IMHO - In my honest opinion. (If you wanna be a smart ass add TBQH after it). In my honest opinion to be quite honest.

IMO- In my opinion.

INC - Short for incomming.

Kite/Kiting - Kiting is when you get a mob to follow you around and you deal damage to it but it is unable to do damage to you. Pretty much only Ranged classes can do this as you will need to keep agro on the target, constantly hitting him with some sort of ability to prevent it from evading. You can do this as melee but it is not time efficient and is 100x more difficult.

D/C - Stands for Disconnected. D/C or just plain DC works here for letting people know you or someone else in the group got disconnected.

W/E - How 10 year old kids say whatever.

JK - Just Kidding

IRL - Stands for In Real Life.

KoS - Stands for Kill on Sight.

Loot - Loot are all the items

Instances - Instances are areas that are "instanced" off from the rest of the game. An instance can be anything but most of the time it is an area where a lot of group content takes place such as a Dungeon or a PvP type scenario.

Mix/Maxing - When a player crunches a bunch of numbers to make their characters as good as they can. They crunch stats, plan rotations and do a bunch of other useless things. Players that Mix/Max lack serious common sense.

CC - Crowd Control. This is when you use an ability on a mob or player and it stops them from attacking completely for a certain period of time.

Mez - The word people used to use for crowd control or "CC" before they started using CC. Mez is still used in a lot of games, primarily EQ.

Addons - Addons refer to additional programs that are downloaded and installed individually which you can enable or disable ingame.

OMG - Oh my god.

Proc - Stands for Programmed Random Occurence. It is hard to explain a proc to a complete noobie, but then again a complete noobie won't need to know what a proc is so... I'll put it into more advanced terms. Certain weapons or abilities can "proc". A proc is when an effect is passively activated on an item. This can be activated by any number of things.

Mana - Mana is the primary bar used by most classes that cast across all different MMORPGs. Different games call "mana" different things, but in almost all games it generally appears as the blue bar below your health bar.

Mob - An abbreviation for monster.

MT - Mistell. It is what is said after someone says something exceptionally embarassing in the wrong chat. Like "I lost my dildo collection again." "mt"

Ditto - A childish way of sayin "me too". For example, "I've got a green dildo!" "ditto!"

Mule - In all of gaming, not even just MMORPGs, a mule is a character that holds all of your valuables which you don't want to sell or that you're waiting to sell.

Noob - Noob stands for a beginning or crappy player.

Nerf - A nerf is a negative change that happens to a part of the game. For example, say the Warrior class for your game had their main abilities damage lowered by 10%, that is an example of a nerf.

OOM - Out of mana. Remember me mentioning the little blue bar that is under your health? Regardless of if it is called mana in the game you're playing or not, when it gets depleated the only thing you can say that everyone will understand is OOM.

Pwned - Almost the same thing as owned and all other corny words that are used in this type of situation. If you're curious of the type of situation, Pwned and owned are used whenever you defeat another player or severly injure one in a brief period of time. Pwned and Owned are both used in everyday conversations now and most of the times they're both said out of context or by some ignorant putz that doesn't even know their real defintion.

Owned - Almost the same thing as pwned and all other corny words that are used in this type of situation. If you're curious of the type of situation, Pwned and owned are used whenever you defeat another player or severly injure one in a brief period of time. Pwned and Owned are both used in everyday conversations now and most of the times they're both said out of context or by some ignorant putz that doesn't even know their real defintion.

Pat (Patrol) - A pat is a wondering mob or pack of mobs. You will probably only ever hear this term used in a dungeon since that is really the only place you will run into patrols that actually pose difficulty.

PK - Player Killer. Not much else to explain here, a PK is a player that kills other players in PvP combat.

Ninja - In MMORPG's a Ninja is not something that is cool or seems like fun. A ninja is a character that steals loot from you during an instance, raid or while masturbating.

NP - Stands for No problem. This is one of the most commonly used acronyms on the internet.

1337 - 1337 stands for leet. To see what leet means look below.

Leet - Leet is a sarcastic form of "elite", which that words definition is obvious. Calling someone "leet" is like saying they are elite, but sarcastically. In other words, if you call someone leet it's like telling them they suck.

Port - Port is short for teleport, which as you could guess teleports are used for transportation purposes.

Power Level (PL) - Power leveling is when a higher level character or even a character of equal level assists you in leveling faster by killing mobs for you after you mark them so you get full XP or following you around/buffing you if the tagging doesn't work. When being power leveled you will level at a 3 to 4x faster rate.

Nuke - Very similar to real life, a nuke is a direct damage ability that instantly hits the target for a large amount of damage.

NPC - NPC stands for Non playable character. Simply enough an NPC is a character you can't control.

Pug - Pug stands for Pick up Group, which is just a group of players that have never met before this group.

QQ - QQ is meant to resemble a pair of eyes with tears rolling out of them. QQ is said to people who are in an exceptionally bitter mood, just to tease and bust their balls.

Regen - Short for Regeneration. Whether it be mana, health or anything else.

Pull/Puller - A pull is when one person in the group goes out of the group to find a pack of mobs and bring them safely back to the group without agroing others. A puller is the name for the person who does this everytime.

Rez - Rez is short for resurrect. Which if you are familiar at all with MMORPGs you know how important resurect is, especially in games such as EverQest that have a serious death penatlys

933Spawn - Spawn is rather self explanatory. After you kill a mob you will need to wait for it to "respawn", which I know you know that word. Now, take off the "re" part and then you have your definition!

Twink - To twink a character a character out you need to give the character the best possible gear for their level.

WB - Welcome Back. It's said each time when someone comes back from being afk.

Wipe - To wipe in an instance means everyone in the group died.

Root - Rooting a target is kind of like stunning them since they are unable to move. It is a great form of CC when you have absolutly no other

Snare - Unlike rooting, snaring a target is much more of a PvP ability. Roots are generlly

Adds - When it comes to MMORPGs, adds are mobs that attack you ontop of the robs you already had attacking you.

RvR - Stands for Realm vrs Realm.

Zone - A zone is a place in a game.

 

Language Ones:

FML - Fuck My Life

FFS - For Fucks Sake

GTFO - Get the fuck out