Party - SEE: Group.
Profession - Some games use professions for their classes. SEE: Class.
PUG - Acronym that stands for Pick Up Group. This type of group is formed by people who do not consistently play together, and may even be meeting for the first time. They are often formed through the use of in-game "group finding" tools, or by just going to the location where you want to do something and pick group members from people that happen to be in the same place at the same time. PUGs are typically less organized and less proficient than regular groups, since the members do not have practice working with each other.
Race - Some games only have humans, but many have a wide variety of other playable races. Races can include the traditional elf and dwarf, or sometimes more exotic races like catfolk, trulloc, minotaur, lizardman, etc.
Spec - SEE: Specialization
Specialization - Many games give you the ability to specialize your character in a number of ways. You can improve certain abilities at the expense of others, you can choose different paths of advancement, etc. This is often refered to as your spec or your build.
Skills - Sometimes skills are the same as abilities (SEE: Ability), but in other games your skills are statistics that affect or enhance your abilities.
Stats - SEE: Statistics
Statistics - Not all games use statistics, but those that do generally use them as numerical representations of core attributes of your character - things like strength, intelligence, dexterity, constitution, etc. These statistics are then used to determine success or failure of other actions, or they might determine things like your total health, total mana, chance to critically hit, etc.
Stealth - Certain character types have the ability to "hide in shadows" or enter a "stealth mode." In MMORPGs, this is usually a type of invisibility that lets stealth characters sneak up on others for large critical strikes or for scouting. Implementation of stealth varies enormously from MMO to MMO. Some stealth powers are pure toggles. Others are cast and have a limited duration.
Support - Support is a class role that is designed to support or assist other class roles. Healers, buffers, and crowd controllers are traditionally the main types of support. Some hybrid classes also provide support.
Tank - A character or class that is designed for Tanking.
Tanking - This is the class role that involves holding aggro and absorbing damage so other team members can deliver DPS, debuffs, crowd control, and so forth to take down opponents. Tanking is mainly about two things: threat/aggro generation (holding the attention of a foe) and damage absorption/mitigation. It is a sad trend in modern online games that tanks are often very weak at dealing damage. This makes tank characters very group oriented as solo or small group play is frustrating since it takes them forever to kill things. This is, in my opinion, a flawed and anti-fun way to design “tanks.”
Toon - This is another term for a character or online avatar. It is a shortened version of the word "cartoon." Since many early MMO characters were very cartoonish looking, this term evolved.
Twink - A character/player who engages in Twinking.
Twinking - The process of artificially or excessively buffing up a character using resources from a higher level character, a higher level friend, gold bought from an RMT site, or any method other than normal play of that character. The classic example of twinking is using your own high level character to farm or buy full sets of powerful gear for a lower level character of your own.
XP - See: Experience Points.
The MMO Gaming Dictionary is a work in constant progress. We invite all of our readers to visit the blog post connected to this project and suggest other terms that should be included. Please visit the MMO Gaming Dictionary blog post.
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