Gaming Hacks

Understand MMORPG Lingo

While there are plenty of interesting lands to explore in MMO games, you’ll stick out like an ugly American tourist unless you speak the highly specialized language. Some of the lingo may be obvious even to newbies, but if holding down a day job for several years has reduced your street credibility to Vanilla Ice-fan levels, you’ll find it hard to succeed until you know how to communicate.

Fortunately, I can help you sell items for a profit, adventure in a group, or seem like an old hand at monster-whacking. Table 3-1 shows a glossary of training, twinking, ganking, and more.

Table 3-1. The A-Zs of MMORPG speak

Term	Definition
AC	Asheron’s Call, by Turbine Entertainment.
AC2	Asheron’s Call 2, by Turbine Entertainment.
Achiever	One of the four Bartle Player Types. Achiever players play MMOGs for the purpose of advancing their characters as far as they can go in an attempt to beat the game.
Add	A monster that attacks an individual or group already engaged in a fight. Often used as a warning.
AFK	Away From Keyboard. Said when a player leaves the computer but stays logged into the game. Can also be a mode entered on purpose to alert other players that there is no one at the keyboard.
Aggro	Also known as Hate, Aggro is when a creature begins to attack a character. The act of initiating this is called Getting Aggro. The area around a monster where players can activate it is the Aggro Radius.
AI	Artificial Intelligence. The behavior or programming ...