MMOG Lingo Twists Tongues

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.

Comments

The french dictionary has it already

[theefer]

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.

Ninja and Gank

[jlavarj]

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 to lay the blame on him for not only his project being late but the apparent failure of IT as well).

Re:kk instead of ok...?

[terpl]

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.