How Gaming Makes me a Better Graduate Student: Glossary

I'll probably edit this business as I go because this is basically like picking only one page of words out of Merriam Webster and hoping it's enough.

General Key Terms:

Aggro: When an npc decides you look like breakfast. This can occur when you taunt a mob, or get to close to it, etc. Also known as hate, enmity.

Carebear: Generally speaking, someone who doesn't like fighting other players or someone who bursts into tears when another person steals their lollipop. And then kills them.

DPS: Damage per second. An e-peen measuring tool. Also known as 'deeps' (don't ask me why).

First-Person Shooters (FPS): e.g. Counterstrike/Halo. If you don't know what those are I'm sorry but we can't be friends

Glass Cannon: A high dps class that will die if you look at it funny. Dish it, but can't take it, standard hypocrisy.

HOT: Heals over Time. Like convalescence, your broken leg heals slowly if someone casts a HOT on you, rather than magically snapping back into place.

Instance: Hmm, this is kind of like a mini-game I guess. You and your buddies enter an area and no one else can join you or alter the area in any way because it is 'yours'. Many copies of the same instance can exist simultaneously, allowing people to access content without dealing with the lag of 100000 people doing the same thing.

LOS: Line of sight. If you (or a mob) can see something from where you/it are, it's in LOS

MMO: Massive Multiplayer Online Game (the G is silent)
MMORPG: Massive Multiplayer Role-Playing Game
Mob: An npc that you can kill. Generally drops phat loots.

NPC: Non player character. NPCs can hand out quests, be background fluff, or kill you. Depending, you know.

PvE: Player vs Enviornment. These are games, or areas, where it's just you running around, possibly running around killing npcs. Players can not kill other players in these places. PvErs are people who play such games.
PvP: Player vs Player. These are games, or areas, where it's fight to death and spoils to the champion. PvP areas do not necessarily lack a PvE component. PvPers are people who play such games.

Real-Time Strategy (RTS): A game where you and your opponent are making decisions regarding attacking each other and exactly the same time. This usually requires a massive amount of skill to makes decisions in fractions of a second and a really good internet connection.
Role Playing (RP): In which you create a backstory for you character and act it out in game (and sometimes out of game). Naturally in games that don't cater to the RP community such people are seen as weird and derided as such.

Spawn: If you kill a mob in an MMO, it doesn't stay dead forever. Or else no one would get to kill it and the game would be pretty short. The mob will 'respawn' after a certain period of time (respawn timer). If the timer on something is pretty long it's not unusual to go 'hey brah, what you doing?' and have brah answer 'camping this rare spawn man, it's been 6 hrs!'

Turn-based Strategy (TBS): A time a game where you have a certain amount of time to issues commands to your character, or army, etc to execute certain commands and then your turn ends. You opponent does the same while you wait and the cycle continues.

Wipe: You, and all your friends, die. Game over, have fun trying to reclaim your body!

Player Archetypes:

Since the days of tabletop games, people have molded certain classes with specific attributes that when combined together make a badass team. These archetypes I think are generally in the public consciousness because it's been around so long, even though they may not specifically know what they mean. Classes in modern times are usually a mix and match of these abilities, but there are few group-oriented games that do not generally fall into these stereotypes.

Tank: This is the guy takes all the punishment from a mob. Tanks generally have high health as their primary occupation is getting their face smashed in, and hate-building abilities (like taunts) to keep the mob on them and not turning to his buddies. Names you might have heard that are probably tanks: Knights, Templar, Paladin, etc.

Heals: As implied by the name, this person heals. Never, ever, piss off your healer because if you do you're totally dead. Kind of like waitresses. Names you might have heard that are probably clerics: Cleric, Monk, Priest etc.

DPS: wait wait, you say, this is conflicting with the definition above! DPS has taken a double meaning as a signifier of a High DPS class. Their primary job is deal an insane amount of damage either in bursts, or sustained. They usually have comically low health. Names you might have heard that are probably dps: Archers, Assasins, Rangers, Wizards, Sorcerers, Mesmer.

Crowd Control (CC): As the name suggests, these players' primary purpose is to keep mobs under control. If you tank mucks up aggro radius, or your dps decides to go cowboy and pull 6 mobs at once, you depend on your CC to keep them away from the group. Common skills involve rooting mobs in place, slowing them down, fearing them so the run away from you, etc. Names that you heard that are probably CC: Sorcerers, Spirit* where * is a wildcard.

Tank and Spank: Not a player but a situation. This is a straightforward fight between your group and the mob, the tank engages the mob, turns it away the group and everyone proceeds to 'spank' it. No one said gaming was mature.

Nothing is funnier than watching a tank loose aggro, watch the mob drop onto the healer/dps (depending on hate multipliers for each class) and wipe the entire group. Tank will be blamed for failing to hold aggro, dps will be blamed for too much dps, heals will be blamed for not healing through Fuckdiculous amounts of damage. Ragefire lol.