Get good: Vocabulary lesson

Brushing up on your gamer slang

By Brittney MacDonald, Life & Style Editor

Living the gamer life is no easy thing. That’s just in general, it has nothing to do with making the swap from console to PC. Penciling in a rigorous gaming work-out is easier said than done. I mean, let’s face it, we all have busy lives between school, work, and maintaining necessary yet sometimes tedious social connections—I mean yeah, they’re important, but so is my next boss fight! As I’ve mentioned in previous issues, the social aspect is generally what drives a life-long console user to take up PC gaming. Though it’s getting more diverse now, the majority of multi-player games are still being played on PC, and it’s still the largest conduit for gaming’s most social genre, the MMO. That being said, transitioning to a more social environment as a gamer can be a bit jarring—especially when you can’t understand what the hell people are saying!

Online gamers have developed their own unique vocabulary, which you will have to master in order to sit at the proverbial table. As such, I have compiled a list of some of the most used words to better facilitate your understanding. For the sake of keeping this game-related I’m going to define words that are only used specifically for gaming and not ones that are used more generally for all online interaction, such as “afk.”

Aggro: Usually used in place of “aggression.” If you’re pulling aggro it means that you’ve drawn the attention of the enemy. Focusing aggro means you’re intentionally drawing the attention of the enemy to one specific player or person—generally someone with really high defence—and using them as a distraction while everyone else attacks the enemy.

Balance: In most cases balance refers to a character or class’s viability in competitive play. If a character or class is balanced it means that they have equal advantages and disadvantages to playing them. If they are not it means they are over or under powered.

Buff: Either an ability or an effect that increases your or another player/enemy’s stats for a set period of time.

Filthy casual: An insult meaning you are unskilled.

Cheese: An unfair advantage or exploit. An example of cheesing a boss would be to get him stuck in a corner and then shoot him with a ranged weapon so his attacks can’t possibly reach you.

DPS: Stands for “Damage Per Second.” This is often used to classify players who focus on damaging an enemy. The trade-off is that they usually tend to have really weak defence, so they need someone to protect them and/or heal them.

Easter egg: An in-joke or cameo hidden in the game for the amusement of players. This can sometimes refer to cross-game promotion, such as the hidden murloc (originally a World of Warcraft character) in Overwatch, or just be something the developers threw in for funzies.

GG: Good game. It’s polite to say this after playing in PvP, whether you win or lose. Don’t be a dick.

Kill steal or KS: Literally what it says. If you kill steal it means you last hit something that another player was working on killing, thereby taking the rewards from killing said enemy. Don’t do this if you want to make friends, but do do this if you want to troll your friends—it’s hilarious!

Nerf: When something is deemed t0o overpowered, it receives a nerf from the game developers. This means it decreases in power or is reworked in some way so that its utility isn’t as necessary. This can refer to an object or character.

Meta: The current state of the game.

Pubstomper: A person or character that is really good at beating new players, but falls short against people with more experience.

Salt: Translate to “bitter.” Someone who is salty is generally just angry and bitter over a loss.

Scrub: No necessarily a bad player in the ability department. More so someone who you wouldn’t want to play with because their ego is too big.

Smurf: When you are an experienced player that creates a new account to fight lower-level players, or to help out someone who is new to the game.

Tank: A character or class with really heavy defence that can draw aggro away from the rest of their team.

Trainer: A program independent of the game that is used to hack the game and cheat. The most common are ones that will auto-aim for you, or ones that allow you to see through obstacles so you know when an enemy is coming.

Zoning: Working to keep an enemy within a specific space so that you can better attack them and control the pacing of the fight.