Breakfast Topic: Rerolling our roots
by Amanda Dean 
Jun 4th 2008 at 8:00AM
The question arose in the WoW official forums "Why do they call it 'rolling?'" This is of course in reference to creating new characters. The original poster pointed out that there really is no rolling involved just selection. I'm sure its obvious to most of us that the terms comes from pen and paper role playing games where we roll dice to determine character statistics and sometimes other attributes. But it got me thinking of terms that we use for WoW that came from other games:
- The battleground Zerg comes from Starcraft's Zerg race which was kind of a fast, battle driven faction.
- DKP is short for Dragon Kill Points, a term that dates back to EverQuest when the main bosses were dragons.
- Nerf means to make things less powerful, and refers to the Nerf brand of spongy toys.
- For some reason we refer to instances as dungeons, despite the fact that Stockades is the only actual dungeon that comes to mind. Though I have to admit, even in D&D dungeon crawls were typically done in caves or castles.
It's surprising how terms seem to stick with us even when they're obsolete. Speaking of rolling, when was the last time you actually rolled down a window in a car?
It's good to go back and remember out gaming roots. I'm sure there are many more crossover terms, and terms from the World of Warcraft lexicon like Leroy Jenkins, will out live Azeroth. For the life of me I can't find the etiology of the term "twink." What else am I missing?
Filed under: Fan stuff, Breakfast Topics, Lore, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
rosencratz Jun 4th 2008 8:09AM
It's worth mentioning that some instances are or were refferred to as Dungeons in the quest log where it now says (group) or so.
i think Stockades as you say and a couple of the older instances still are refferred to as Dungeons but I can't recall.
epsilon343 Jun 4th 2008 8:10AM
I always thought of "rolling" a new character in the terms of "let's roll out" or "get rolling" as in we're using the character. Not sure if that makes sense to anyone but me but that's the terms that I always thought in.
Ktok Jun 4th 2008 9:37AM
This is sad, and it makes me feel old. Do that many WoW players actually lack pen and paper RPGs in their geek cred?
Brimoonfang Jun 4th 2008 9:48AM
I'm with you, Ktok.
Anyone whose only experience with RPG's is on a
computer or console has missed out on a lot of fun.
I've been playing D&D since the original blue box,
pre-AD&D 1st edition.
Although I wouldn't feel too bad -- when my guild runs heroics, I'm typically the youngest player (at 40!)
darian Jun 4th 2008 2:58PM
To be fair a lot of the old MUDs and even newer games such as Baldur's Gate involved rolling. The only difference is you weren't physically rolling the dice.
Zakk Jun 4th 2008 4:06PM
That's what I thought it was, too, epsilon. I s'pose it doesn't matter how you look at it, so long as you know what it means rather than where it came from, though.
Friday_Knight Jun 4th 2008 8:32PM
Wait. There's WoW players that haven't played D&D? WTF? Nerds.
Extremitus Jun 4th 2008 8:16AM
Twink could be two things I guess - the "twinkling" of a star (unlikely), or a slender young gay gentleman. I can not for the life of me see how either could be related to the twinking that goes on in WoW. At a REAL push I guess you could say that having a "twink" boyfriend involves being a bit of a sugar-daddy to him and that's a LITTLE like spending lots of your main's gold on buying items for your twink alt. Anyone got anything better?
William Jun 4th 2008 8:22AM
I vote you win. I don't care if it's right or not, it's logical and humorous. :D
Bastiaan Jun 4th 2008 8:32AM
That's pretty much the idea I had of the 'etiology' of twink, too.
Candina@WH Jun 4th 2008 9:54AM
Actually, I though 'twink' came from the Twinkie snack cake. Artificial with a creme center. (i.e. butch gear, no skill).
Dalymar Jun 4th 2008 1:23PM
Correct.
Twink is a gay guy, who is being "supported" by an older gay guy.
The same way, a twink alt is usually supported (by money or otherwise) by your high level main.
darian Jun 4th 2008 3:02PM
I can't speak for the furthest origins of the word, but "twinking" a character goes back as far as D&D, where it referred to the careful and obsessive min/maxing of a character to the point of absurdity.
How D&D picked up the word is beyond me.
Foss Jun 4th 2008 8:15AM
"Gank" comes from "Gang kill" referring to groups of one faction ganging up against a single or much smaller number of opposing faction players. It's often mistakenly used to refer to a single player killing a much lower level player.
It may also refer to the film "Airheads", in which the main character Chazz says the line "My man's gonna gank you".
Gulbrandt Jun 4th 2008 6:08PM
Here's an interesting article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinking
In early MUDS (Text-only Multi-User Dungeons, the earliest of which was created in the late 1970s), making your avatar as powerful as possible was called "tweaking". It's possible that someone intentionally misspelled "tweaking" as "twink" or "twinking".
In EverQuest, there was a bronze armor set that you could clad your lower level characters in. A character completely clad in the bronze plate was golden on the outside, and soft and squishy on the inside--a Twinkie.
qoa Jun 4th 2008 6:50PM
Uh. Gank is a term from hip hop. "ganking" is robbing somebody.
Camaris Jun 4th 2008 8:15AM
"Proccing" is one of the odd ones I can't immediately place. It's a strange word.
"Kek" is mostly known as the Orcish version of LOL, but apparently it's also something from StarCraft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet#Kekeke).
Foss Jun 4th 2008 8:18AM
PROC = PRogrammed Random Occurence :)
William Jun 4th 2008 8:24AM
Hahaha... I didn't know kek was orcish. I've seen kik a lot which is what comes out when your LOL is shifted left one finger-position on the keyboard.
Zali Jun 4th 2008 8:47AM
I think KEK actually is a Korean version of LOL. It was used on line by Koreans in chat settings where the Korean alphabet wasn't supported. I recall reading somewhere that the WOW dev's specifically added KEK to the language translator for when Alliance see Whored text pop up with an LOL.
**ADDENDUM** I just read the link that you posted Camaris, and it specifically points out that KEK is used as the Korean LOL, but that it actually DID origniate with Starcraft. So, ummm... yea. Brownie points for everyone.