Had an idea for a guide which everyone can contribute towards! I was thinking about compiling a ‘glossary’ of sorts describing or elaborating upon words and phrases commonly associated specifically with Classic that might not be easily understood by new folks and those who might be playing WoW (let alone Classic) for the first time.
For example here’s a few I’ve thought of already:
- Tourist - A type of player who will only participate in Classic during the ‘initial hype’ and then leave shortly afterwards.
- Loot trading - The ability to trade soulbound items with another player from your group for a period of 2 hours. Regarded as a controversial change to the original game.
- Blizzlike - An unofficial emulation of the game in question that seeks to be as accurate to retail
as possible. - BM - Beast Mastery (and other acronyms to do with classes and specs, for example the Warlock specs I find very confusing)
- Sharding - Another controversial change from the original game in which players are ‘instanced’ into smaller, separate virtual worlds to improve server performance.
- BiS - Describing an item that is considered ‘best in slot’ (item with the highest performance) for that class and spec in the context being considered.
Do you guys have anything to contribute? I will update this list as we go along.
I've spent sooo much time on talent calculators. x)
DS/Ruin - refers to the warlock talent spec 7/21/23, named after the key talents Demonic Sacrifice and Ruin.
DM/Ruin - refers to the warlock talent spec 0/30/21, named after the key talents Master Demonologist and Ruin.
SM/Ruin - refers to the warlock talent spec 30/0/21, named after the key talents Shadow Mastery and Ruin.
A lot of PvE specs love ruin...
Others!
N00b, noob, etc. - derogatory term used for someone who shouldn't be playing like a newcomer anymore, but definitely is.
oh wait! Dungeon acronyms!
RFC - Ragefire Chasm.
WC - Wailing Caverns.
VC/DM(@lvl 20 ish) - Deadmines
SFK - Shadowfang Keep
BFD - Blackfathom Depths
Stocks - Stormwind Stockades
RFK - Razorfen Kraul
SM - Scarlet Monastery;
- Gy - Graveyard
- L/Lib - Library
- A/Arm - Armory
- C/Cath - Cathedral
Now I ran out of effort sorry :D
Great contribution already will add to the list, thanks hob :)
I found more effort!
RFD - Razorfen Downs
ZF - Zul'Farrak
ST - Temple of Atai'Hakkar (Sunken Temple)
Scholo - Scholomance
Strat - Stratholme
- UD - Undead side
- Live - Scarlet side
BRD - Blackrock Depths
LBRS - Lower Blackrock Spire
UBRS - Upper Blackrock Spire
DM - Dire Maul (W, E, N - West, East, North)
ZG - Zul'Gurub
MC - Molten Core
BWL - Blackwing Lair
AQ20 - The Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj
AQ40 - The Temple of Ahn'Qiraj
Naxx - The Dread Necropolis Naxxramas, Scourge Stronghold in Lordaeron, high seat of the Right Hand of The Lich King, the Lich and Necromancer Kel'thuzad.
Ony - Onyxia's Lair
Did I forget any dungeon or was that all of them?
Likes: 49
Zhevra - Endangered creature of the Barrens hunted down mercilessly and inhumanely for it’s prized hooves. ‘Zhevra grinding’ is a controversial subject that divides the Classic community.
BRD Lava Run - A variant of BRD where players drop to Lord Incendius and jump over the lava straight to the final boss of the instance
BRD attunement run - A variant of BRD, very similar to the Lava Run, except players will stop by the MC entrance in order to complete to MC attunement quest.
BRD Arena Farm - A variant of BRD where players only do the arena run and then reset the dungeon. Sometimes, the entire event is solo'd by mages due as a safe method of making gold.
BRD Jail Break - A variant of BRD where players are only completing a quest required for the Onyxia attunement.
DM - Dire Maul
DM:E - A variant of DM where players only complete the Eastern wing. The entrance is located on the eastern side of DM's courtyard.
DM:W - A variant of DM where players only complete the Western wing. The entrance is located on the western side of DM's courtyard.
DM:N - A variant of DM where players only complete the Northern wing. The entrance is located on the norther side of DM's courtyard.
DM:N tribute or "tribute run" - A variant of DM:N where players complete the Northern 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.
Mara - Maraudon
Mara Blue/Purple - A variant of Maraudon where players enter through the blue/purple side.
Mara Orange - A variant of Maraudon where players enter through the orange side.
Mara princess run - A variant of Maraudon where players use the in order to skip most of the bosses and only kill the final 1-3 bosses of the instance.
UBRS Rend - A variant of UBRS where players stop after killing Rend Blackhand.
Strath UD - A variant of Stratholme where players only kill the Undead side of Stratholme.
Strath live/living - A variant of Stratholme where players only kill the Humanoid (hence living) side of Stratholme.
Also, for reference, the TL;DR of the Warlock specs goes like this:
SM/Ruin: You take and spam . Good all-arounder, most common spec for Warlocks. It's alright for leveling, PvE-ing, PvP-ing and farming.
DS/Ruin: You sacrifice the Succubus with to get 5% more extra Shadow damage and spam . Used primarily by raiders. Deals more damage than SM/Ruin in PvE, sucks more everywhere else.
MD (improper DM)/Ruin: A spec used for tanking Twin Emperors in AQ40 because of extra Shadow resistance.
NF/SL: A PvP spec which plays with...
You know what, you're right. The Warlock builds are terribly confusing. Most players will be SM/Ruin.
Great contributions guys keep em coming! This is going to be great.
If you want, I could start transcribing some of the terminology found in old WoW guides such as these.
I don't know how useful they would be (and some of them are dated) but I have two guides with a glossary of terms and it wouldn't take me more than a few hours to do so.
It sounds worth it man, I’d appreciate that. So long as they are not obvious ones then I’d love for you to add to the list!
Any word yet on a finished/concise list? It's been a very long time since Classic and a few of the things mentioned here I've never even heard of.
And maybe a sticky even? This might be a lifesaver for people new to Vanilla.
Like what? I’d help out but I don’t know with what.
I mean for example I've never heard the usage of the term 'Mara princess run' back then in /3 but the description already given by Nymis was an a-ha moment. 
It's just that some of the abbreviations didn't ring a bell by themselves.
Oh my god I'd completely forgotten about this.
It'll be up in Guides soon promise! If anyone has any other contributions step forward
Something that was prominent in the private server community that I'm sure will make its way into Classic - Soft & Hard reserved items.
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.
Also, Nymis mention the UBRS Rend run. There is another version of this run called "UBRS Jed / Rend."
UBRS Jed / Rend: Jed Runewatcher is a rare spawn in UBRS that drops the healing pre-bis trinket https://classic.wowhead.com/item=12930/briarwood-reed.
Being a rare spawn, he is not guaranteed to spawn every run. What you must do is have every member of your UBRS run leave group and enter UBRS alone. Once zoned in, players type "/tar jed" (he is target-able from the entrance of the dungeon). If you don't find him, you can reset the instance and /camp to get a fresh one. Eventually, one of the 10 people in your raid is bound to get an instance ID that has Jed in it. You then re-make the group and enter the correct instance ID.
