I'm looking to put together a glossary of unusual gaming/vw terms. It's hard to do academic work in this area when everybody keeps inventing new terms. You feel like an idiot when a friend says "So I was hanging out in UO, pulled a twink, then went afk, and they did a wipe and I found my Morningstar-of-Extraordinarily-Crushing-Damage had been nerfed!" And you say, "Right..."
So, anybody want to give me terms and definitions that should be included in a dictionary that the media and television arm of TerraNova Enterprises, Inc. might publish?
My current favorite candidates include:
"twink" (v/n) the action of a higher-level player helping a lower level player rather than the lower level player doing everything themselves. Usually means providing higher-level assets (swords, rares, etc) than the lower level character could obtain themselves. Often used where a single person has multiple avatars at different levels, and has the higher level avatar provide the asset to his/her lower level avatar. Source: Koster, LegendMUD, UrbanDictionary. (Not to be confused with "twink" in non-gaming, sexual contexts)
"nerf" (v, trans) the action of developers reducing the strength of an in-game asset where the asset is too powerful and unbalances other parts of the game. Arose when swords in UO were rebalanced and the characters felt they were hitting each other with nerf swords. Source: Koster, LegendMUD, UrbanDictionary.
