Nice post. I’m hoping that the upcoming patch/expansion resets our ‘Newbie meters’ a bit, though I suspect a lot of people will completely ignore the scenery in a race to 85.

I’m a brand new warlock. Having played WoW so long, I am actually doing well in figuring out the class and doing decent DPS, but I know diddly squat and I know I know diddly squat. However, I am thoroughly ENJOYING playing the lower levels and learning the class. It’s like I’m seeing WoW through new eyes.

The first time I played WoW though, I was a n00b. I had absolutely no idea how to play…I was positively ignorant about how to play my class. Worse off, I thought I was doing WELL.

and then…the other day…someone called me a nub (derogatory) for playing a DK. I understand that lots of people hate DK’s, but this is a class I have devoted nearly 2 years to. I know how to play and to call me a nub because I play a DK is inexcusable and offensive. Le sigh.

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Dave: As you said, you should have known better than to rise to the bait of the troll otherwise known as Snuffy.

Snuffy: I have been trolled by the Royal Shakespearean Society of Pedants previously and you are way out of your league.

Truly this blog is written for fun, with the intention that it is received in the spirit of fun. It is not, nor even intended, as some academic peer reviewed journal.

Thus your recent comments lend nothing to the blog, rather have people scratching their heads wondering what sort of a fool would make such statements. Dave and I know the answer to this question, but the hundreds of other readers do not.

While I appreciate real life friends reading my blog, I don’t appreciate them ignoring the intent, which is for it to be a silly, lighthearted, often ill-written view of the world of warcraft from the position of a GCD spamming Gnome Mage.

If you can’t ensure that future comments remain within the spirit of the blog, then as I have many times before, I shall place you on /ignore and in the one master stroke, save all my readers from your pedantry.

“The meaning and usage of words” is a misleading phrase because it implies a universality of said meaning(s) and usage(s) when the actual issue is that changes are taking place in pockets of users and creating multifarious overlapping jargons and a virtual Tower of Babel.

Even the language you employ just here must be your own jargon which I don’t fully understand since it appears to me as if you are employing sarcasm just to be mean and snarky.

I must be mistaken.

Seeing as you have had the time to sit and study the usage and development of these abbreviations over time I have to trust you that “are actually all supposed to be pronounced the same way”.

I would have thought that the context they were used may have shown that perhaps the meaning was different. Language is a fickle mistress.

It is amazing that the meaning and usage of words would adapt over time in the gaming world just as they have in the broader world.

Heaven forbid that users abbreviate words. Then they and others change what they mean over time. My world has just changed forever. I think I need a bex and a lie down.

Most of the misunderstandings in online gaming arise from a failure of communication.

and what about ‘nabs’ btw?