WoW Classic Glossary: Abbreviations & Acronyms

Wow Classic Glossary Abbreviations & Acronyms
WoW Classic Rune Icon

As someone who came back to private servers after a long stint on retail, I had difficulty understanding what people were actually talking about in player chat. I tried to find explanations (or even translations) online but didn’t have much luck. I asked on the forums here for some contributions and we ended up with a collection of explanations for common terms, acronyms and abbreviations expected to exist in Classic. We hope you find this useful 🙂

Instances acronyms and variations

WoW Classic Dungeon Icon

RFC – Ragefire Chasm
WC – Wailing Caverns
DM (@lvl 20ish) – The Deadmines

  • VC – also The Deadmines (Edwin VanCleef being the final boss)

SFK – Shadowfang Keep
BFD – Blackfathom Deeps
Stocks – The Stockade
RFK – Razorfen Kraul
SM – Scarlet Monastery

  • :GY – Graveyard section only
  • :L/Lib – Library section only
  • :A/Arm – Armory section only
  • :C/Cath – Cathedral section only

RFD – Razorfen Downs
ZF – Zul’Farrak
ST – Sunken Temple
Scholo – Scholomance
Strat – Stratholme

  • :Orb Run – A common gold farming technique in which participants clear Strat Live for the righteous orbs and round robin the drops.
  • :UD – Undead side
  • :L/Live – Scarlet side (living side)

Mara – Maraudon

  • :Blue/Purple – A variant of Maraudon where players enter through the blue/purple side.
  • :Orange – A variant of Maraudon where players enter through the orange side.
  • :Princess – A variant of Maraudon where players use the Scepter of Celebras in order to skip most of the bosses and only kill the final 1-3 bosses of the instance.

BRD – Blackrock Depths
LBRS – Lower Blackrock Spire
UBRS – Upper Blackrock Spire

  • :Rend – A variant of UBRS where players stop after killing Warchief Rend Blackhand.
  • :Jed/Rend – Jed Runewatcher is a rare spawn in UBRS that drops the healing pre-bis trinket Briarwood Reed. Explanation on process here.

DM – Dire Maul

  • :N – North Wing only
    :E – East Wing only
    :W – West Wing only
  • :Trib/Tribute/DMNT/DMT – A variant where players complete the North wing while avoiding to kill as many bosses as possible before killing the final one. If the other bosses are kept alive before killing King Gordok, each of them will award an item at the end of the dungeon, as well as a powerful buff which is often sought after by raiders. The loot awarded in a tribute run is often better than the one awarded by a regular kill, and it is also on a separate loot table.
  • :Jump Runs/DME jumps/DMJR – A common gold farming technique usually employed by a fury warrior and restoration shaman. The duo will clear DM east and skip most trash by jumping. Explained here.

ZGZul’Gurub
MCMolten Core, also referring to a priest’s Mind Control spell
BWLBlackwing Lair
AQ20Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj
AQ40Ahn’Qiraj
Naxx – The Dread Necropolis Naxxramas
OnyOnyxia’s Lair

Sellables reserved – A gold farming technique where a tank/heal combo (typically) will carry newer players through an end game dungeon in exchange for all drops except for bop items that the player can use.

Confusing ass Warlock specs

WoW Classic Warlock Icon

SM/Ruin – You take Shadow Mastery and spam Shadow Bolt.
DS/Ruin – You sacrifice the Succubus with Demonic Sacrifice to get 5% more extra Shadow damage and spam Shadow Bolt. Used primarily by raiders.
MD (improper DM)/Ruin – A spec used for tanking Twin Emperors in AQ40 because of extra Shadow resistance

NF/SL – A Warlock PvP spec which plays with Nightfall and Soul Link.
NF/Conflag – A Warlock PvP spec which plays with Nightfall and Conflagrate.
SL/SB – A Warlock PvP spec which plays with Soul Link and Shadowburn.

Raiding terminology

WoW Classic Raid Icon

Hard Res – An item that has been reserved before a raid / dungeon that no other player is aloud to reserve or roll on. When putting together a dungeon or raid PuG, you should declare all hard reserved items in your LFG posts.
Soft Res – Any item that has not been hard reserved can be soft reserved by any amount of players. Players typically can only have 1 soft res per raid / dungeon and it must be declared before or at the start of the dungeon. If a soft reserved item drops, all players who reserved it will roll for it. If only 1 person soft reserved an item, they will automatically get it.
DKP – Dragon Kill Points. An alternative system for loot distribution that varies from guild to guild.
GDKP – Gold DKP; a loot system employed mostly in PUGS, but sometimes in guild groups, in which the item recipient is determined by gold bidding., explained here and from first-hand experience here.
+1 reset – In this loot distribution system the +1 refers to having received an item before. Once a member receives a +1 they are ineligible to roll. Explained here.

Table – a phrase often used to request water and food from a mage. Origin is in retail where mages gained the ability to prepare banquet tables.

Points of contention and discussion

a tourist (n) – A player who will only participate in Classic during the ‘initial hype’ and then leave shortly afterwards.
blizzlike (adj) – An unofficial emulation of the game in question that seeks to be as accurate to retail
as possible.
loot trading (v) – The ability to trade soulbound items with another player from your group after rolls have been conducted. Only in raids.
sharding (n) – System by which players are ‘instanced’ into smaller, separate virtual worlds to split large populations of similar level and thus reduce competition for resources. Regarded as a controversial change to the original game.
If you want to contribute to the glossary please leave a reply below. We have omitted obvious ones like ‘LFG’ etc. and want submissions that are specifically Classic or Vanilla related.

 

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Lne
Lne(@lne)
5 years ago

should add explain gdkp, +1 reset at rag/domo etc, as loot systems; mc as mind control; table (back ported to private serverfs from retail) as asking for food/water from a mage; zg jump run, orb run (strat live): DMT, DMNT as alternatives for dire maul tribute;

I’ll add more if i think of em 🙂

Lne
Lne(@lne)
5 years ago

GDKP: Gold DKP; a loot system employed mostly in PUGS, but sometimes in guild groups, in which the item recipient is determined by gold bidding.

Typically, there is a buy-in paid by all members before being allowed to join the run (5g, 10g, 20g, 50g, 100g all relatively common) to ensure that people do not drop out and are invested in the run’s success. All gold obtained is then split among all participants with a certain amount withheld to pay the organizer, tanks, and potentially carry heals/dps.

Often times the hosting guild will reserve all material drops (cores dark iron, ingots, etc.) as well as legendaries, but these could also be sold for bid.

For example a typical GDKP MC run may have a 20g buy in and high value items such as bone reavers edge, onslaught girdle, spell power rings, azuresong mage blade etc may each go for several hundred gold in bids. This would result in thousands of gold then being redistributed among the raiders minus a typical 50-200g fee for the organizer, tanks, and carries.

+1 reset: An extremely common loot system employed by pug groups. In this system the +1 refers to having received an item before. Once a member receives a +1 they are ineligible to roll on an item if any member with a lower + value desires the item. Typically, there are resets in which all participants +values are erased. The resets usually occur at either Major Domo and/or Rag in MC or at Jindo and/or Hakkar in ZG in recognition of the typically much higher value of these bosses’ loots. Usually associated with MS>OS as well (main spec over off spec).

Jump Runs/DME jumps/ DMJR : A common gold farming technique usually employed by a fury warrior and restoration shaman. The duo will clear DM east and skip most trash by jumping. Requires the professions of mining and enchanting for optimal use. The pay off is a large amount of enchanting materials, 1 or more arcane crystals and other gems, a sizeable amount of thorium, and potentially any of the class books including Foror’s Compendium of Dragonslaying. Profits are split by agreement between the duo.

Orb Run: A common gold farming technique in which participants clear Strat Live for the righteous orbs and round robin the drops. Typically the first orb or sometimes 2 are guaranteed to the tank and sometimes the healer is given a guaranteed orb as well.

Sellables reserved: A gold farming technique where a tank/heal combo (typically) will carry newer players through an end game dungeon in exchange for all drops except for bop items that the player can use.

MC could refer to Molten Core or Mind controlling mobs (priest spell)

Table: a phrase often used to request water and food from a mage. Origin is in retail where mages gained the ability to prepare banquet tables that raiders could click on to gain all the water and food they needed.

DMNT, DMT: alternative acronyms referring to Tribute runs in Diremaul

Henhouse
Henhouse(@henhouse)
5 years ago

loot trading (v) – The ability to trade soulbound items with another player from your group after rolls have been conducted. Regarded as a controversial change to the original game.

I guess this can be updated to raid* now that it will no longer apply to 5-man groups.

Stfuppercut
Stfuppercut(@stfuppercut)
4 years ago

LFG – looking for group
LFM – ……. for more
WTS – Willing to sell
WTT – …… trade
WTB – …… buy
PST – Please send tell
PM – Personal message
DPS – Damage per second
DD – Damage dealer
+ – Yes
– – No
BG – battleground

Not sure if were laying down the basics or not, but these are some of the more common pieces of terminology I have seen. I updated with terms that were primarily used on private because I think it gives good insight. Most of our primary influencers are previous private players, their audience might magnify private server terminology and how frequently it will be used in Classic.

Anonymous
Anonymous(@anonymous_1607109007)
4 years ago

Here’s one I remembered!

COD or C.O.D = cash on delivery

Used in trade when the seller wants to sell an item on the auction house (AH) or by mailing the item to the buyer. Or when the buyer is looking for an item not listed on the AH (WTB “X” C.O.D me!)

Crazy that I remember most of these weird abbreviations 10+ years later..

Exe
Exe(@exe)
4 years ago

OG – Orgrimmar
TB – Thunder Bluff
UC – Undercity

SW – Stormwind
IF – Ironforge
I don’t know if people really use an abbreviation for Darnassus.

BB – Booty Bay
CR or XR – Crossroads
SS – Southshore
TM – Tarren Mill

STV – Stranglethorn Vale
WPL – Western Plaguelands
EPL – Eastern Plaguelands

Anonymous
Anonymous(@anonymous_1607109007)
4 years ago

OG – Orgrimmar
TB – Thunder Bluff
UC – Undercity

SW – Stormwind
IF – Ironforge
I don’t know if people really use an abbreviation for Darnassus.

BB – Booty Bay
CR or XR – Crossroads
SS – Southshore
TM – Tarren Mill

STV – Stranglethorn Vale
WPL – Western Plaguelands
EPL – Eastern Plaguelands

Proposing a new abbreviation for Darnassus, TTOT = That Tree Over There (pronounced like “THOT”) 🙂

Abannon
Abannon(@abannon)
4 years ago

Could anyone please add and enlighten me on the word ‘meta’? I hear it being thrown around a lot for some reason yet I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean.

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