Say what!? A Short WoW Lingo Primer

The culture of WoW is a unique one, where people from all cultures and nationalities bunch up together. Over the years players evolved their own slang, abbreviations and acronyms.

While there are hundreds more, here is a small list of those commonly seen while playing World of Warcraft.

Addon - A small module used to change or improve the playability of the game. QuestHelper is a very popular addon that will help players find out where to go to complete their quests.

Aggro - How much a creature focuses on a player. It is said that "A tank keeps good aggro" when that tank can keep all the monsters focused on him at all times.

AoE - Area of Effect. Usually used to denote an area that will be covered by a spell. AoE spells include Blizzard, Consecretion, Thunderclap, Volley, etc.

Buff/Debuff - A buff is a beneficial spell cast on someone, such as Blessing of Kings, Fortitude and various scrolls and potions. A debuff is a spell with a negative effect on a player, such as those reducing stats, movement speed, etc.

Cooldown - The amount of time between two casts of a spell or ability. For example, the base cooldown on Flash Heal is 1.5 second, meaning after casting Flash Heal, the player needs to wait 1.5 second to cast another.

Crit - Critical. Usually used to refer to one's chance to perform a critical hit (a hit inflicting twice the usual damage).

DPS - Damage Per Second. The amount of points of damage a player can inflict every second. The higher the number, the more damage a player can do.

Farming - Repeating an action over and over to acquire something. Killing the same type of monsters over and over to acquire items such as cloth is said to be "Farming for cloth".

Grinding - Repeating an action over and over. A player involved in repeatedly killing monsters or running an instance to gain experience is said to be "Grinding for experience".

Instance - An area where a group of people enter and play alone from the rest of the game. Also called a Dungeon. Instances are intended for group of 5 or more players.

Kiting - The action of having a monster follow a player while leading it around. Usually used to distract that monster from attacking other players until the group is ready to deal with it.

Lag - Refers to the slow response from the game. A player opening his mailbox or bank can sometimes see that action take place several seconds after initiating it. Such player is said to experience lag.

Mobs - Usually refers to monsters in a pack that players need to kill. Comes from the term "Mobile Objects" used by the game developers.

Nerf - Making something weaker. Reducing a player's ability to do DPS would be said to be "Nerfing a player's dps".

PvE - Player versus Environment. When players fight against computer controlled creatures, such as when questing or fighting in an instance.

PvP - Player versus Player. When players fight each other in various matches and encounters.

Pull - The action of starting a fight, usually done by the tank. A Face pull is the action of starting a fight by walking, usually inadvertently, too close to one or several creatures.

Raid - A group of 10 or more people playing together either in an outside encounter or in an instance.

Spawning - The birth or rebirth of a creature, usually occurring after a set event or time interval.

Tank - The player responsible for keeping all the monsters on himself while others kill those monsters.

Trash - Group of one or more creature players encounter on their way to a boss in an instance. These usually need to be killed to move forward.

Vendor trash - Items that have no value and should be sold to a vendor instead of being kept.

Vent - Ventrilo. A voice-chat application for Windows, MacOS and Linux used by players to talk during questing, instances and raids. Provides better quality and management than in-game voice-chat. Download from Ventrilo's website.

Zerg - To attack something with massive speed and force.

Ventrilo: What it is, how to set it up and why you may be kicked from some raids if you dont have it!

Ventrilo - a.k.a. "Vent" - is a voice chat system outside of World of Warcraft. It is mainly used to alleviate the problems of in-game chat, such as very poor sound quality, no access management, etc.

Vent is mandatory in most raids. You may actually get kicked from a raid if you are not using it since most raid leaders will need to give extensive instructions and assignments about looting and boss fights or for calling incoming monsters or special events during battle.

Installation

There are versions of Vent for both Windows and MacOs. In order to use Vent you need to download the Vent "Client", which you can find on Ventrilo's download page here. Once the client has been downloaded, simply run or open the file to install it.

Configuration

After it has been installed, start Vent. This is the window you should see (on Windows):

User Name: click on the first arrow in the red outline. On the next window click the "New" button and enter the name of your character in the game then click Ok. It is important that others recognize you, so make sure you use a name others in the group know.

Server: click on the second arrow in the red ouline. On the next window click "New" to create a new server. Give it a name, such as "I Hate Murlocs" and click Ok. Under "Hostname or IP" enter the following: sulfur.typefrag.com. For the "Port number" enter: 54213. For the "Password", please ask an officer of the guild or consult the Guild Information in the Guild tab of the game.

Once you entered all those, click Ok and Vent is ready to use! Simply click "Connect" to join the chat.

Changing channels

If there are different channels or "chat rooms" on the server you just connected to, you can enter the channel of your choice by double-clicking on its name.

Speaking in Vent

When using Vent to talk with others, you should always disable in-game chat to prevent echoing your voice both through Vent and the game.

To speak, simply press and hold the "Tilde" key located right under the Escape key to the top left of your keyboard:

When you hold the key, a short buzzing sound will let you know that you are speaking in Vent. Releasing the key will have vent buzz again to tell you that you stopped broadcasting your voice.

Etiquette using Vent in raids

Be polite, dont yell! Your voice goes straight into the hearphones of other players and yelling wont win you any favors! Do not curse or insult people. Do not openly point fingers to people you believe have done something you do not agree with. That is what whispering is for.

Let people finish their sentences! Talking on top of someone while he/she is talking will make both of you very hard to hear.

Keep it brief while fighting! While fighting, especially during boss fights, keep the chatter to a minimum so that people under attack or healers can be heard.

However, make yourself heard! If something seems to be wrong, if you dont agree with loot rules, if you feel you have been insulted, provoked or loot has been taken away from you for no reason, speak up and make yourself heard! A game such as WoW is full of jerks, there's no denying it. If you have no voice, no one else will speak for you so walk out and leave. Or stay. Its your choice.

Finally... Listen to instructions! If you are a non-stop voice machine, please restrain yourself a few minutes and listen to the loot rules and to the instructions before each fight. If you did not understand what was explained, do not hesitate to ask for clarification. The only stupid question is the one you do not ask.

-Lit and Cel

Sons of Hodir Reputation. Get it, it's good for you!

Even though the Sons of Hodir faction has been around since the release of Wrath of the Lich King, not everyone knows how to get reputation with them, why they should even bother or what to do with the precious Relics of Ulduar.

First the why. The Sons of Hodir quartermaster sells some the best shoulder enchants in the game thus far. In addition to that, you can get leatherworking patterns as well as jewelcrafting and tailoring recipes. Another reason is the huge amount of money you'll be making by completeling the quests, not to mention the Reins of the Ice Mammoth mount!

Now for the how. First off, fly off to K3 in Storm Peaks. If you can't fly in Northrend yet, speak to the little guy next to the flightmaster when you land to get a "Rent-a-Mount" loaner! Yes, even if you cannot use flying mounts at all you'll be able to fly in some regions now, albeit slowly.

Next, take the quest "They took our men!" from Gretchen Fizzlespark in the K3 camp. This begins the loooong quest chain to become neutral with Sons of Hodir! The chain has a total of 35 parts complete with side quests! Plenty of fun to be had by everyone!

Rejoice however, for after only 30 quests in that chain you'll be awarded enough rep to become neutral and head to the Sons of Hodir base and start doing their daily quests for even more rep. Oh, did I forget mention you can't wear a tabard to gain reputation with this faction? Thought so...

If you got enough gold, however, the process can be shortened considerably. Head to your local auction house and look for "Relic of Ulduar". You can turn in 10 of these for 250 reputation with the faction. If we do a little math, we find out we need 42000 reputation from neutral to exalted, which converts to 168 turn ins of 10 relics, totalling 1680 relics.

Be ready to either pay an hefty sum or, alternatively, spend 2-3 weeks doing the quests and make quite a bit of gold.

In the end, is it worth it? If you're playing the game casually, take it easy and open up the faction slowly. If you're a hardcore player or someone that wants the very best gear and enchants, then you'll definitely want to open up this faction to get the shoulders enchant as soon as possible!

Weirdness: Mount my Mount Already!

Anyone that knows Lit know she's helpful to a fault. There's nothing she wont do for her friends, even if that means carrying a 2 ton Elekk mount on her own mount...

Where's animal protection when you need it...

Weirdness: Big is Beautiful Again!

Every hunter would love to have the biggest pet they could get their hands on. Ellayia - a.k.a. Lit's hunter - probably got a World of Warcraft record when she was leveling in Hellfire with her trusty tanking gorilla named, you guessed it, Celanos! Judge for yourself!

That's right Cel, back away veeeeery slowly....

Not big enough?? Are you daft mate? Fine, lets put some Bestial Wrath on the chimp...

If the monkey's stats scale with his size, he should be able to one-shot the bosses in Ulduar!

- Lit and Cel

Patch 3.2: Saddle up! Ready! Joust!

Patch 3.2 will bring us new 5, 10 and 25 man instances up in Icecrown.

These instances have a strong focus on old-fashioned jousting, so anyone interested in running them when they are released should head up to the Argent Tournament and start practicing.

On top of the experience you will gain, you will also be able to get reputation with a number of factions and also get access to epic items. The daily quests you can complete at the tournament is also a nice source of income.

The 5 man instance is called Trial of the Champion. It will feature normal and heroic modes and is supposed to drop purple items - in addition to Champion's Seals - from all the bosses, even on normal.

In this instance, you will need to mount a horse and fight a series of opponents with your group. Alliance characters will face horde opponents and horde characters will face alliance opponents. Once these are defeated, the group will face the Argent's best fighters, ultimately confronting The Black Knight.

Bottom line: saddle up and head to Icecrown! Patch 3.2 might only arrive in several weeks, but that doesn't mean you cant get a head start!

- Lit and Cel