• Created in 2003; words added 2004, 2005. Thanks also to contributors to this gaming terms glossary!*

General Note About Online Speech

Due to the time and tedium of typing, one finds that most experienced online gamers write (speak) in various forms of shorthand. Dialects and pratically different languages occur in different games, forums, chats, and so on.

In DAoC, some servers evidence the interesting trend of dropping verbs. For example:

"We are on the way" becomes "We otw" or just "otw"

"They’re coming" becomes "They coming" or just "they inc"

About the only phrase that still requires a being-verb noun is "Where are you?" - but that has its own shorthand ("wru"), and the reply is usually lacking verbs again: "We at Bolg"

This can result in a lot of fast conveyance of information, but at the price of standard English. Entire conversations or chat logs occur in this style:

Player 1: "wru?" ("Where are you?")

Player 2: "Come Bolg, we on lord." ("Come to Dun Bolg; we are fighting the lord.") "Bring rams, we hit DC next." ("Bring rams; we are hitting Dun Crauchon next.")

Player 1: "omw with 3 rams" ("On my way with 3 rams")

Player 2: "eta?" ("Estimated time of arrival?")

Player 1: "brt in 5" ("Be right there in 5 minutes.")

Player 3: "Albs NE" ("Albion players sighted to the northeast.")

Player 4: "INC" ("Enemies incoming.")

Player 3: "omg" ("Oh my god.")

Player 4: "Pwned" ("(We/they) destroyed (them/us).")

Given the fast-paced nature of online combat and the tedious nature of online typing (not to mention varying levels of education and English "skillz"), it’s hardly a surprise that the easiest, fastest way of typing should become standard. What is interesting is seeing how different online communities develop their own languages - how the languages differ, and how they might be very similar.

Someday, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if a lot of verbs did wind up slipping out of the English language - at least online, and until the advent of either speech input or neuro-inputs.

Text copyright 2003, 2005 E. Izawa, rei -at- mit.edu and also by Chris L’Etoile ("Stormwaltz"), who has written some of the text (as noted) and also supplied some of the terms. Contributions also by: Michael Bauer, Brent Thale, Mahmud Mahmud, Firoeth Avalon; Japanese information received from: Camy3 (email), and also Myuo3 and the other Knights of Zedan (DAoC Hib/MLF), and