wow-classic WoW Classic Glossary

[Stan 5,182]

If you're new to the game and would like to give WoW Classic a shot, here's a glossary of the most common terms and gaming slang used in World of Warcraft.

WoW Classic Glossary

Add - A creature that adds into an existing fight against you.

AFK - Away From Keyboard. This means that the person will not be available for a short time. In the game, there is a specific /afk command that you can type into the chat to let other people know that you are AFK.

Aggro - Most often this is used to note that a creature is attacking you or your group. The term denotes the aggressive interest of a monster/NPC. It is the tank's responsibility to hold aggro.

Aggro Radius - This is the distance from which an enemy decides to attack you. The radius changes based on the level difference between the monster and the character. Tougher monsters will be aggroing from farther away. The distance is also influenced by creature type. Predators, for instance, have a large aggro radius.

Agility - This is an attribute in World of Warcraft. It determines a character's ability to Dodge attacks, score Critical Hits, and deal more damage in general with their attacks (only true with certain classes).

AKA - Shorthand for Also Known As.

Alt - A secondary character. This refers to a character that you put less effort into as opposed to your primary (Main) character.

Area of Effect - These are spells, abilities, and items that influence multiple targets over a given area. They are mostly based on a circle around a specific target person (the caster or an enemy in the distance).

Armor - The amount of protective armor your character is wearing. It increases with better gear. The current armor is the primary factor in determining physical damage mitigation.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) - Creatures in the game have a certain level of intelligence (they cast abilities in combat or run at low health). This is called AI.

Attack Power - The stat influences the physical Damage Per Second (DPS) of your character. The higher your melee Attack Power, the more damage you're going to deal, especially with heavier weapons. Having a higher ranged Attack Power increases overall ranged damage.

Attack Skill - Each character has an Attack Skill with at least several weapon types. Your maximum Attack Skill is equal to five times your current level. Training with a weapon by attacking increases your Attack Skill (relative to your enemy's Defense) toward this cap. During the battle, Attack Skill influences the chance to strike successfully and score Critical Hits.

Attribute - A major character stat. Each attribute reflects on a major side of a character's capabilities.

• Strength for melee damage and blocking with shields,
• Agility for Dodging, Critical Hits, and some classes' Attack Power,
• Stamina for Hit Points,
• Intellect for Mana, and Spirit for recovery of Hit Points/Mana over time.

Auction House (AH) - Areas that allow characters to buy/sell items. The transactions have a fee and you can find auction houses in major cities.

Avatar - The visual representation of your character in World of Warcraft.

Battleground - An instanced area for PvP conflict. You can queue up for battlegrounds in any major city. There are 3 battlegrounds in Classic: Warsong Gulch (WSG), Arathi Basin (AB), and Alterac Valley (AV).

BBL - Be Back Later.

Bind - To Bind your Hearthstone to a certain Inn (so that you can teleport there in the future). The term is also used to define when an item Binds to your character on pickup (BoP) or on first equip (BoE).

Bind on Equip - This means that an item will Bind to your character the first time it is equipped. After that, it can't be traded or sold.

Bind on Pickup - These items immediately Bind to a character when they are looted or crafted and can never be sold or traded. We also call these items Soulbound.

Boat/Zeppelin - Both are used for travel between the continents.

Boots - A specific Run Speed increase that's present in Warsong Gulch. Running over the "Boots" increases your Run Speed for a short period of time.

BRB - Be Right Back.

BRT - Be Right There.

Buff - Using spells to increase the potential of your allies. Priests can, for example, give their allies Stamina, Mages can provide Intellect and so forth.

Bug - An in-game issue that causes something unexpected to happen. Bugs should be reported, not abused, because they can lead to suspensions.

Camp - Refers to controlling an area in the hopes of either getting all the monster spawns for yourself/your group, or for the purpose of stopping PvP enemies from having safety there. You can camp graveyards, corpses of fallen enemies, etc.

Carebear - A derogatory name for a person who avoids PvP, and plays on Normal servers.

Cast - To use a spell. This occurs instantly or over time.

Caster - A person capable of casting spells. Often, this term is used to refer to Mages, Warlocks, Priests, and Druids.

Chain Casting - Going from one spell directly into the next.

Cheese - A method of winning that isn't exploitive, but appears to be unfair.

Class - A set of abilities and statistics for your character that is chosen during creation. This greatly affects how you will play your character.

Combat Pet - Warlocks and Hunters have pets that fight by their side and greatly affect the outcome of combat.

Con - Short for consider. 

Corpse Camping - To stay near a slain enemy in world PvP in an attempt to prevent them from resurrecting at their body without being killed again.

Crash to Desktop - When the game kicks you back into the desktop. People will likely refe to this as a DC (disconnect).

Creep - Term for neutral creatures that won't attack you.

Crit - Short term for a Critical Hit (a blow that deals roughly twice normal damage).

Critters - Creatures in the world that have no combat capabilities (rats, snakes).

Crowd Control (CC) - Using spells and abilities to disable enemy targets for a substantial period. Fear, Polymorph, and Sap are examples of powerful crowd control (CC) spells. Crowd control may inhibit movement but still allow enemies a moderate amount of control (Frost Nova, roots, Hamstring).

Customer Service Representative - Blizzard employees also known as Game Masters (GMs) that assist you with various issues when you submit a ticket.

Damage Mitigation - The Armor stat is compared to a table of estimated Armor values for a given level and the result is your character's Damage Mitigation (found by highlighting the Armor stat on your character page). The value roughly explains the amount of damage absorbed by your armor when your character is struck by a creature of a similar level. Abilities and Spells can influence both Armor and Damage Mitigation.

Damage Per Second (DPS) - A way to figure out how effective, per unit time, a given action is. The higher the DPS, the more damage an activity can produce. This is an important attribute in both PvP and PvE. There are various addons to track your DPS.

Debuff - A debuff is any spell that goes on an enemy target and stays there for a period of time. They deal damage or reduce stats.

Defense - The stat determines how often your character is struck physically and how often such blows are Critical Hits. The stat has a cap of five times the character's level and increases toward that cap when your character is attacked.

Direct Damage - Spells, Abilities, and Items that deal damage immediately and directly to a target.

Dispel - To remove a Debuff from an ally or to remove a positive effect from a foe.

DKP - A commonly used system for gear distribution in World of Warcraft.

DMG - Short for Damage.

DND - Do Not Disturb. There's a specific in-game command to let people know that you don't want to be disturbed. Type /dnd into the chat.

DOT - Shorthand for Damage Over Time. DOTs are abilities and spells that don't deal damage instantly, but in multiple ticks for their duration.

Duping - Creating multiple items from a single source. This is only possible through rare exploits and will lead to account suspensions.

Emote - An action that is made by your character. Emotes are useful for roleplaying.

Experience (XP) - Experience measures your progress toward another level.

Exploit - Activities that are against the Terms of Use and capitalize on bugs to give players an unfair advantage over others. Abusing exploits can lead to account suspensions.

Farm - To repeatedly kill a given target for desired drops.

Flag - An object (target) in the Battlegrounds. These are right-clicked to pick up or activate. 

Flagged - To be PvP enabled. On PvE servers, Standard RP servers, and in starter zones, using /pvp is required before fighting against the other faction if possible. Use /pvp to flag yourself for PvP.

Flight - Both factions use bats/gryphons to fly characters between locations. 

Free for All - A loot rule that allows any character to loot any body. Often reserved for close friends.

Gank - Primarily, this is a term used on PvP servers. This is when characters of a much higher level go after low-level players that have no hope of surviving or escaping.

GG - Short for "Good Game!" Spoken to friends after the end of Battlegrounds.

GJ - Short for "Good Job!" to signal approval or appreciation.

Gimp - Means to take a course of action with Talents or equipment that makes your character ineffective. A Warrior with Intellect gear would be a good example of a gimp.

GM - Blizzard representatives that help you with various in-game issues via tickets.

Graveyard - A place where characters return after death. The spirits can run back to their bodies for life, or they can Resurrect at the Spirit Healer nearby, but that incurs Resurrection Sickness for characters level 10 and above (this damages their equipment and causes a stat debuff for a short time).

Graveyard Camping - Staying in areas where enemies are spawned in the Battlegrounds or use the Spirit Healer in the normal world.

Grief - Making an active effort to harass other players that goes beyond the rules of the game. Graveyard camping can be defined as griefing.

Grind - To mindlessly gain experience by killing monsters as opposed to questing.

Group Loot - A standard set of loot rules for groups in dungeons. Group Loot does a Round Robin system for standard items, letting each person loot a fair number of bodies. Then, when items of a chosen threshold drop, a window appears that allows people to roll Need, Greed, or Pass on the item.

Group/Party - A team of up to five players that are invited (/inv) to complete common goals.

GUI - Graphical User Interface.

Guild - Groups of players get together and form guilds. Initially, this takes nine signatures for unguilded characters on unique accounts. This starts off by getting a charter from one of three major cities in your faction.

Hate List - Monsters keep an internal list of the character they want to kill the most. This is the Hate List. Damage done, healing, and other activities against the monster's interest determine who stays high on the Hate List.

Heal Over Time (HOT) - A healing spell that helps another character in doses instead of in one instant chunk.

Hearthstone - An item given to all characters that allows you to Bind at Inns for instant teleportation (once per hour).

Hit Points - The stat to measure how tough your character is (how much damage they take before dying). Stamina bonuses, levels, and buffs affect Hit Points.

Honor - Points gained from kills against enemies or familiar (or higher) level and from Battleground victories.

Hybrid - A class that fills several niches or rests in-between them. Druids and Shamans are good examples of hybrid classes. They can specialize in tanking, healing, and damage-dealing roles.

IMO - Short for In My Opinion.

Incoming (INC) - Used to let people know that enemies are on their way.

Here is a glossary for all new players that never played the game, but want to give WoW Classic a shot. The glossary consists of the most common terms used in World of Warcraft.

Instance - An area that is privately loaded for individual characters or groups (dungeons, raids, battlegrounds).

Intellect - Stat that determines the amount of Mana your character has, the speed at which Defense and Weapon Skills are learned, and improves the Spell Critical Chance.

J/K - Common term to signal that someone is "just kidding" and that they should not be taken seriously.

Kill on Sight (KOS) - Used in PvP to kill the enemy immediately on sight without mercy.

Kill Steal - To Top enemies that another player is setting up to fight. This prevents that player from being able to get experience for the monster. This is considered poor etiquette under most circumstances.

Kite - To Kill in Time. A technique of killing enemies slowly by using DOTs and ranged attacks to wound them while running away from them.

Lag - Delays caused by poor internet connection. 

Leech - To be in a group or raid and contribute nothing.

Level - A measure of your character's power and progression in the game.

Leveling - Gaining levels, abilities, and powers for your characters. This is done by completing quests and killing monsters.

Looking for Group (LFG) - Denotes that someone is looking for a group.

Looking for More (LFM) - Means that someone is forming a group and looking for other party members to fill in the missing spots.

Line of Sight (LOS) - The direct line between one entity and their target. Many abilities require a direct Line of Sight, and when LOS is broken the spells/abilities will fail to work.

Link - To post an item in a channel so that others may see its stats.

LOL - Short for Laugh Out Loud.

LOM/OOM - Low on Mana/Out of Mana. These statements are made by casters to let their group know that they need time to regenerate Mana. This is mostly used by Healers in dungeons.

Loot - The treasure from monsters that drops when they are dead.

Lowbie - A person of low level for a given activity.

Maibox - Inns and Bank areas have Mailboxes. Auction items and money are delivered here. Money can also be sent to other characters.

Main - Your current primary character.

Master Looter - A loot setting that only allows the group leader to handle treasure and its dispensation. This is time inefficient and is often used in DKP-type systems or when dealing with extremely valuable loot.

Melee - Direct physical combat or close range.

Mistell (MT) - When you message the wrong person in the game.

Mob - Non-Player Character.

Need Before Greed - The honor system of loot instances and dungeons. This means that you do not roll NEED on items that your character doesn't actually want to equip.

Nerf - When the game is patched and certain things become less powerful. This applies to creatures, spells, talents, and pretty much anything.

Ninja - To loot an item that was up for discussion or to roll need on items that you obviously don't need.

NVM - Short for Nevermind.

N00B/Noob/Newbie - This is often said when someone does something completely foolish that gets them or their party in trouble. This can also be used to insult players new to the game.

NPC - Non-Player Character. This includes quest givers, creatures you kill, and basically every creature that is not a player.

Offtank - Also known as Secondary Tanks. These are tough characters that back up the primary Tank by worrying about single targets that peel onto casters. When not needed for this role, Offtanks often attempt to deal high damage.

OMW - On My Way.

Own/Pwn - Used to denote a major victory over someone or something.

PC - Player Character.

Ping - To create a glowing yellow circle on the local map through right-clicking on an area. This indicates direct position of a target.

Point Blank AoE (PBAoE) - An area of effect ability that centers around the caster.

Port - To use a portal or Hearthstone to get to a specific location. Mages can open portals to capital cities.

Pot - Potions are used in PvE and PvP for restoring Hit Points and Mana. There are also other potions with self-enhancing effects.

Powerlevel - To assist a lower-level character by helping them quest/grind at a much faster pace. Often more effective with higher-level characters that stay out of the group.

Proc - Short for Programmed Random Occurrence - A powerful item effect that goes off under certain conditions (on hit, when struck).

Profession - Trades for crafting and gathering. A character can learn two primary professions and up to three secondary professions.

PST - Please Send Tell. This lets people know that you want to be privately messaged with any offers.

Pug - Completing dungeons or raids with random people that you recruited from /2 or LFG instead of your guild.

Puller - The person designated to pull enemies back to a group.

Player Versus Environment (PvE) - Quests, dungeons, monster grinding are considered to be PvE content in World of Warcraft.

Player versus Player (PvP) - Battlegrounds and world PvP are considered PvP content in the game.

QFT - Quoted For Truth.

Queue - The waiting list for the Battlegrounds and the login server.

Raid - A zone with powerful bosses that require a group of more than 5 players. A group of more than 5 players. Most raids in Classic require 40-player raids.

Random - Used to figure out who gets loot. If multiple people want the same item, then /random can be used to determine who gets it.

Rank - Gaining high Honor in a given week increases your Standing compared to other players of the same faction. If you work hard to increase your PvP rank, various rewards await you in your capital city.

Reputation - Different NPC groups can be courted in various ways. With increased Reputation, you gain access to items, recipes, and resources. If you are on war against a certain faction, you will lose reputation when killing members of a given faction.

Resurrection Sickness - When brought back to life by a Spirit Healer, you will get a debuff for 10 minutes which decreases your stats that cannot be cured by characters. This is referred to as res sickness. It does not affect characters below level 10.

Resistance - Ability to negate or mitigate damage and effect from various magical or non-physical attacks. There are Resistances for Arcane, Fire, Nature, Frost, and Shadow.

Rested Bonus - Characters gain double the normal experience for kills while they are in a Rested state. This accrues when you log out of the game in an Inn/City.

Resurrection/Rez - Being brought back to life. This is done by returning to a corpse, speaking to a Spirit Healer, or by having healing characters cast various type of Resurrection Spells.

Roleplaying - Staying in-character to promote a greater sense of depth to the world.

Root - To lock an enemy in place for a short time.

Run Speed - How fast your character moves across terrain.

Snare - To slow an enemy's movement. Hamstring, Wing Clip, and various Frost Spells will snare opponents. They can still move and fight, but it is easier to Kite them during this time.

Spawn - Defeated enemies and gathered resources return to the world over time.

Specialization (Spec) - Refers to Talent selections. This denotes a focus on playing your character in a specific way.

Spirit - This stat controls the rate of Hit Point/Mana regeneration for your character.

Stacking - Abilities that work in harmony instead of replacing each other are said to Stack.

Stamina - A stat that determines your character's total amount of Hit Points.

Standing - A ladder for Honor gained in a week.

Stat - A statistic that reflects on your gears, levels, and current state. Your stats provide a general idea for your character's combat performance.

Stealth - An ability that allows a character to become invisible, often at the cost of Movement Speed. Stealth is broken when the character takes any type of damage.

Strength - A stat that determines melee damage and potential for damage mitigation from shield blocking.

Stun - An ability/effect that completely halts an enemy. They can't move or escape the effect until it wears off.

Talents - Talent Points are used to invest in one of three Talent Trees. Each character class has three major fields of Talents to choose from, and you can mix and match them to your liking. You will gain them starting at level 10. At max level (60) you will have a total of 51 Talent Points.

Tank - A tough character designed to grab enemy aggro and hold it while mitigating as much of the damage as possible. Warriors are the best tanks in Classic.

Tap - The first point of damage against any target that assigns an NPC to you.

Taunt - An ability that pushes your character much higher or to the top of a creature's Hate List. The tank will generally taunt bosses, whenever the other tank's debuffs stacks are too high.

Tell/Whisper - A private message sent directly to a person by typing /tell or /whisper and their name.

Threat - The amount of influence on the Hate List that a given activity causes. High Threat is good if you want aggro, but squishy casters should watch their threat.

Toon - Another term for your in-game character.

Train - A term used to denote the process of gaining new abilities.

Twink - A low-level character that possesses gear greatly above their abilities and means.

Uber - Something extremely powerful.

WTB/WTS - Want to Buy/Want to Sell.

Zerg - To gather a large group and rush forward.

Zone - A region on Azeroth.

Here's a glossary of all terms that you will come across in WoW Classic.

[Rune1686 3]

A few minor things to possibly add that I noticed were missing but might be common knowledge already:

gtg - good to go, when posting in regards to lfg/lfm such as: "LFM UBRS, heals then gtg!".

kk - 'kay kool, to show you understand or for confirmation.

MT - Also known for Main Tank (besides mistell's).

OT - Can add this to line with Off-Tank, in parenthesis.

[AliokWOWDB 7]

Maybe an important note to add to "AFK" - do not use the command while in a battleground.  You will automatically be removed from the instance.  (It was back in The Burning Crusade, and I maaay still get a little salty over that player who trolled our group.  Queue times sucked for Alterac Valley.)

[Hotpants 5]

36 minutes ago, AliokWOWDB said:

Maybe an important note to add to "AFK" - do not use the command while in a battleground.  You will automatically be removed from the instance.  (It was back in The Burning Crusade, and I maaay still get a little salty over that player who trolled our group.  Queue times sucked for Alterac Valley.)

well you can write afk, you shouldn't write /afk

 

[Keller 25]

Dirge - Give me attention NOW!

[Gerkola 0]

Very useful for beginners! Even me playing 3 years that was helpful ?

Thanks!

[AliokWOWDB 7]

On 8/18/2019 at 1:15 PM, Hotpants said:

well you can write afk, you shouldn't write /afk

 

That was my point, but you are right - I could have written my post to be clearer.

[osoviejo 1]

The definition for "Master Looter" refers to a "DKP-type system" without explaining what that is, and there is no entry in the glossary for DKP.

[Stan 5,182]

2 hours ago, osoviejo said:

The definition for "Master Looter" refers to a "DKP-type system" without explaining what that is, and there is no entry in the glossary for DKP.

Added, thanks.