OotS #619 up ...

[Christian]

... and I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Giant in the Playground Games

 

[Vorput]

Heh, awesome.

Captures the edition wars well

 

[WhatGravitas]

Hehe, good one.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Greylock]

I wish I understood it. Can I beg a translation, plz? I get pieces of it, but not the whole picture.

 

[Rechan]

I wish I understood it. Can I beg a translation, plz? I get pieces of it, but not the whole picture.

Mob - A term used in an MMO to refer to a single monster.

Hence "The MOB" is a play on words, of both a mafia, and an MMO monster.

Respawn - In an MMO, you have many players who are in the same area. They likely also have the same quest as you. Therefore, if you kill all the monsters for a certain quest, those monsters have to be there for the next person to come in and kill. So, these monsters pop back into existance after x number of minutes.

Thus, Two-Life Tony was killed, they waited around until he returned, and then they killed him again.

Train - When a PC has been spotted by a number of monsters, and the PC runs, a 'train' is when all those monsters follow the running PC.

Aggro - a mechanic that designates the biggest threat in the room, and thus drawing the attention of various monsters. Mind you, everything a PC does can draw aggro; damaging, healing, etc.

Boss - The big bad an area, the largest monster that requires a bunch of PCs to kill.

So the "Boss Monster" told the guy in the suit to get a bunch of monsters to follow the offenders, and dispense with unloading on them.

Buff - Just what it sounds like, a spell or effect from an ally that boosts your capacities. In D&D, this would be Bull's Strength, Haste, etc.

Killin their doodz - this was originally a reference to a game where you defend a fortress/flag from an enemy who has a fortress/flag. The person is 'in your base', killing your men. However, it's been adopted as general slang to refer to killing of allies. Often used in jest, or ironic, rather than a legitimate slang phrase.

KTHX - Okay, Thanks, in Leet Speak, or internet speech where short-hand is used because users are lazy typers.

Belkar was seeking a spell to enhance his capacity for slaying of the Thieves Guild rogues.

(Sidenote: I'm not an MMO player, but know the slang. Although, I had to find out what a train was after reading this strip.)

 

[freyar]

long explanation...

And I just liked the sammich jokes.

 

[Silent Cartographer]

I actually laughed out loud; omg!

The term MOB is an early MUD programming term for a Movable OBject; hence, a monster.

Modern MMOs have anti-training algorithms in the MOB AI to prevent serious training. For true fear-of-god training, you have to set the wayback machine to Classic EverQuest. A newb or other unfortunate could bite off more than they could chew or poke their nose where it didn't belong, and choo-choo, here comes the train heading into the station as they run for the exit. You know.., the dungeon/zone exit.., where where wounded and unprepared folks hang out? At least polite players have a hotkey for shouting "ALL ABOARD! TRAIN COMING TO TEH ZONE!!!" Watching several dozen carefully balanced encounters go haywire and mob-crashing into a collection of ungrouped and unready PCs recalls a Pixies fave, Wave of Mutilation.

In some once popular dungeons, there were two side-by-side entrances/exits. It became a social contract to always enter on one side, and leave through the other, because the trains were so bad. On my server, we always entered Karnor's Castle from the right (as you came in) and exited via the left hallway. Training the right-side hall was a severe faux pas, lol.

Training was also a flagrant and popular method of Player Killing on a non-PvP server. Ah, fun times, fun times...

 

[Relique du Madde]

I liked how the MOB even had name tags over their heads...

 

[coyote6]

I liked how the MOB even had name tags over their heads...

That was what had me cracking up. That, and Haley's last line.

 

[Asmor]

KTHX - Okay, Thanks, in Leet Speak, or internet speech where short-hand is used because users are lazy typers.

No! Leet speak is not the same as people who can't (or won't) type correctly (and I refuse to grant that phenomenon any legitimacy by giving it a cutesy name).

Leet speak is the substitution of numbers and symbols for letters and, aside from certain phonetic substitutions (e.g. 'f' -> 'ph' or 'ck' -> 'x') it may or may not be spelled correctly.

For example: |=0|2 3x4[v]|>13