So from my blog posts, I was hoping to convey how modern computer games (WoW, which is arguably the most popular computer game at the moment) have evolved into a very social game with multiple features in the game that foster social aspects.

Now we come to one of the most interesting "spawns" of WoW--internet forums

It's basically a place where WoW players gather and post msgs and/or respond to msgs by other players...

The official site is HERE

You will initially be greeted by types of forums you can browse--WoW General, Realm forums (for your own realm), class forums, etc etc etc. On the forums, you can opt to post on your "main" (or the character you play with most often), your "alt" (alternative character you play...after all, playing only a single player all the time might get boring) or "forum troll", meaning some really low level character you post on to flame (internet lingo for posting inflammatory comments and such...generally just acting really rude behind anonimity that internet offers). Because each character is such a huge investment (in terms of time, in-game money, etc), you can easily develop a positive or negative reputation on the forums...this is especially true if you post on your own realm forums since only residents of that realm will likely carouse realm forums...people talk about anything, whether it's guild recruitment (example found here), message directed a specific person/people/guild (example found here), bartering (example found HERE), technical in-game how-tos (example found HERE), a request for in-game change of mechanics (example found HERE)...the list goes on

Sadly, the general forums are filled with really whiny posts....and derogatory comments...all because people have anonimity thanks to the power of internet. I personally stopped visiting the general forums because the amount of garbage was pretty astounding...I like to frequent my realm forums to see what some players and guilds are upto--how far are they in raiding? did anyone quit the game? any guilds recruiting?

Because we're essentially a small community, it's very easy to keep in touch with each other through the realm forums...

There was once a poor guy who wanted attention on our forums (his character name is Thunderkitty)...so he began posting a lot of useless, spam threads that basically annoyed everyone
THIS THREAD just kind of shows how much of negative reputation he developed...prior to this, I still don't know how, but somehow people found out his Myspace and posted photos of him, calling him names and such


Strangely enough, forums developed its own LANGUAGE (jokingly known as NERD language...after all, this is all possible since English is like an OPEN SYSTEM)
Some of the acronyms:
LOL - Laughing out loud (aka "haha")
WTB/WTS/WTT - Want to buy/sell/trade
WTF - What the ****
DIAF - Die in a fire
PST - Please Send a Tell (aka msg me)
FFS - For ****'s sake
QQ - Synonym for whine...it's because QQ kind of looks like someone crying (it's really hard to explain this via text)

So some of the more common phrases could be something like
"WTB Social Life, PST" (since a stereotypical gamer has no social life)
"(Angrily or jokingly directed at a player) FFS, go DIAF"
"This game is such a timesink QQ!"
"LOL WTF"
"HI2U QT" (Hi to you cutie)

You wouldn't really know how a nerd talks like unless you know one, but overall I find the whole gamer/nerd language to be fun...it's constantly changing and evolving as we speak...sometimes a new word is born

For instance
..
In Starcraft, it's pretty customary for a player to say GG (Good Game) after a match...because I said GG so much when I was playing Starcraft...so sometimes in real life, I find myself muttering "GG" after certain events

Another famous example...in a shooting game called Counter-Strike, players used the word OWNED to indicate how they've won
e.g. "He got owned" or just "OWNED. (When someone dies)"
However, a player accidentally typed PWNED (since O and P are adjacent to one another on a typical keyboard) and people actually started to use the word PWNED rather than OWNED...soon, PWNED turned into PWNT...and now it's a pretty common word used by gamers


Unfortunately it's really difficult for me to explain how gamers interact on the web--it's just wayy too complex...I hope I gave a pretty good example of how we talk on the net :D