MMO general glossary

There's a few terms that come up regularly when I discuss MMOs, so it seemed like a good idea to have a central place to define them.

Last Updated: 10 Jun 2010

PvE, Player vs. Environment: Gameplay where you (and your fellow players) mainly interact with computer-controlled characters and opponents, usually featuring quests and storylines.

PvP, Player vs. Player: The counterpart to PvE, where your opponents are other players. Frequently involves separate battle locations (often with specific goals), although some games have "world" or "open" PvP, where other players can attack you (sometimes with limits) in the same areas where PvE is played.

NPC; mob; monster; boss: NPCs are computer-controlled characters who may be friendly or hostile. Common friendly NPCs include quest-givers, merchants, item crafters, trainers, guards, government officials, or random area residents. Mobs, or monsters, are specific types of NPCs which are usually hostile, or neutral but attackable; they may actually be human, humanoid, or normal animals rather than true monsters. Bosses are higher-power foes, usually either unique (e.g., Ming the Merciless) or of a rare sub-variety (e.g., an ancient black dragon).

Character: An individual the player controls, usually (but not always) human or humanoid. May occasionally be referred to by other names depending on setting. Many games allow for multiple characters on the same account, though it is frequently frowned upon or forbidden to have more than one active in the game at the same time. People frequently refer to "my main" for characters they concentrate on, and "alts" for their various other characters.

Class: The type of character you are playing, which also may be called many other things.

Hit Points, Health; Mana Points, Spell Points: Hit points are a mechanic in nearly all RPGs and represent how much damage you can survive; sometimes called health or similar terms. Mana or spell points (or sometimes endurance, power, energy, etc.) are used to fuel skills. Generally, hit points return between battles, but not during them, or can be directly healed. Mana is more likely to return during battle, but may only return outside it; it might be directly healable, though often it is not.

Skill is a generic term for any type of special ability a character has, whether it's a special sword attack, a fireball, or a healing spell. Most of the time they have a cost in energy (or a similar concept), take time to activate, and have a cooldown or recharge time during which you cannot use it again.

Melee, Ranged, Caster, Support, Hybrid: Melee classes fight in close combat, usually with a weapon, and generally have heavier armor. Ranged classes, not surprisingly, fight from a distance; the generic usually means with a weapon, usually paired with moderate armor. Casters use spells to fight, usually from a distance; their weapon is usually fairly weak, as is their armor. Support classes may or may not use a weapon to deal their primary damage, and tend to have light or moderate armor; they generally concentrate on healing, buffs and/or debuffs (see below). Hybrid characters are a mix of these traits, most often a mix of support and one of the other types.

Buffs, Debuffs: Buffs can strengthen an individual or group. Debuffs weaken them. Common buffs include the ability to evade attacks, withstand more damage, do more damage, etc. Common debuffs include reducing attack speed or effectiveness or inflicting certain types of status effects.

Support skills; utility skills: Support skills include buffing, debuffing, and healing. Utility skills generally refer to status infliction, self-heals, or skills that in general lay outside your class specialities.

Status Effects: Games usually have a certain number of lasting effects that some skills can inflict on foes, such as blinding them (making it difficult or impossible to hit with weapons), poisoning them (making them take damage over time), confusing them (making them not be able to tell friend from foe), etc. These may be called something different in individual games, but most people use and understand this term.

AoE, PBAoE: AoE stands for "area of effect", i.e., the effect happens in an area rather than directly to a single target, though they are frequently centered on a target. PBAoE spells are centered on the caster and affect an area around him.

Aggro, Hate: These are terms regarding how much a mob wants to attack someone. "I have aggro" basically means there are mobs who have decided you're their target; but it can also mean the same thing as hate, which is how much what you've been doing attracts the attention of the mobs even if they haven't tried to attack you yet. What exactly those things are can vary a fair amount from game to game, and whether or not there is some method of deliberately increasing or decreasing hate also varies.

DPS: Damage per second, a common measure of how effective a damaging character is, or short-hand for a class that concentrates on heavy damage. Spike damage, sometimes also called burst damage, is a lot of damage done all at once rather than over time.

Tank: A usually heavy-armor character with the ability to attract and keep aggro, or otherwise get the mobs to focus on him.

Critical Hit: In most games, there's a small chance—based on skill, level, equipment, or some combination—that you will get a critical hit, doing some sort of bonus damage (or possibly just the maximum possible damage). Crit chance is something a lot of players emphasize, as it increases your DPS.

Party; Team; Group: The three most common terms for cooperative player groups both in PvE and PvP; people working for the same goal whether that's finishing the same quests or trouncing the other side in PvP.

Farming: Overall this means doing tasks to gain money or items in an often repetitive way outside the normal progression of play. Most people engage in a small amount of farming (killing things when they're moving from point A to point B instead of evading them, for instance); some people dedicate a lot of time to it to amass wealth, sometimes using specific tricks like taking advantage of certain AI behavior to do so.

Quest; Mission: Specific tasks given in PvE, usually for a reward and generally advancing either the main storyline or a side storyline ("side quests").

Instance, Instanced: An area in a game which is generated specifically for one group or set of groups. The same area can be occupied by multiple sets of players, but each has its own version of the area in which only that set of players is present; players in one instance cannot interact with those in another. Commonly used for things such as dungeons or PvP arenas.

Nerf: When a skill or skills, or a similar game mechanic, are reduced in effectiveness by the developers. Usually is done to try to balance the game better (sometimes, for better, read "harder"). Usually is greeted with dismay except by unaffected people.

Griefing: The deliberate attempt to interfere with other players, usually to hinder their gameplay or enjoyment of the game or simply to annoy one or more other players. Griefing is frowned upon in many games, and game designers sometimes take steps to reduce how and where it can be done, but no one's yet come up with a way to stop a truly determined griefer. PvP-based games typically see more griefing mainly due to greater opportunity, but all multiplayer games are prone to it.

Drop, Loot: When monsters are killed, they drop money and items, loot. Loot is also sometimes used to mean the action of getting the money and items.

Leeching: When a player in a group does not contribute, but is idle to simply reap the rewards, they are leeching.