WoW has accumulated twenty years of shorthand, and the journal uses plenty of it. This glossary explains the terms that come up most often, in the way I use them. It is not official, just practical.
Groups and combat
- Dungeon: an instanced area for a small group, normally five players.
- Raid: a larger instanced encounter for a bigger group, with tougher mechanics and bosses that need coordination.
- Mythic+: a scaling dungeon mode where a keystone sets the difficulty and the clock matters.
- Crowd control (CC): any effect that stops an enemy acting for a while, such as stuns, roots and silences.
- Wipe: when the whole group dies. Every raid team has a story about the longest one.
Gear and loot
- BiS (best in slot): the strongest item you can currently get for a gear slot.
- RNG: short for random number generator, used for anything that depends on luck, drops especially.
- Vault: the weekly reward chest that offers a choice based on content you completed.
- Heirloom: account-wide gear that grows with a character and speeds up levelling.
- Transmog: changing how a piece of gear looks without changing what it does.
Collecting and the economy
- Farming: repeating an activity to gather materials, gold or a particular drop.
- Node: a gatherable resource in the world, such as an herb or an ore vein.
- Warband bank: shared storage that every character in your warband can use.
- Auction house: the in-game market where players list items for each other.
Places and eras
- Vanilla: the original game before any expansion.
- Classic: re-releases of older versions of the game, including seasonal variants.
- Dragonflight and Khaz Algar: recent expansions covered in several journal posts.
- Azeroth: the main world, split into continents and regions.
Missing a term? Send it along through the contact page and I will add it.