Jargon, decoded

The glossary

304 words from World of Warcraft, MMOs, esports and every game chat you have ever been flamed in — what each one means, and how people actually say it. Every entry has its own link, so you can send it to the friend who just asked what a twink is.

Word of the day

Wipe

Raiding & dungeons

Everyone dies. Then the corpse run, the buffs, and the second attempt.

“We wiped at 2%.”

“Wipe it, the tank's dead and the healers are OOM.”

See also: Corpse run, Progression

All words

1 of 304 words for “Theorycraft”

  1. Working out the math of the game — stat weights, rotations, breakpoints — from data and testing instead of feel.

    “The theorycraft says agility beats crit for you until 30% crit.”

    “He theorycrafted the whole build in a spreadsheet.”

    See also: Equivalence points, Sim, Min-max

WoW

World of Warcraft, especially vanilla, Classic and Forever.

79 words

Raiding & dungeons

Group PvE: pulls, loot rules, wipes and parses.

47 words

PvP

Battlegrounds, duels, twinks and world PvP.

31 words

MMO

Words shared by every online RPG.

47 words

Esports

Competitive play, broadcasts and the meta.

21 words

Gaming slang

What people say in every chat, every game.

79 words

Missing a word, or got one wrong? Tell us. Then go build something and use it in a sentence.