This post is meant to be informational so that people from non-MMO backgrounds won't be completely lost. It's okay if you don't understand everything the first time through, but I would welcome suggestions and input.
MMORPG/MMO: A game which has some single-player characteristics (you can play by yourself) but also has a social component. You can choose your level of social involvement, but at minimum you will see other people running around in the world and possibly talking to you.
Millions of people play MMOs. Some people can't go back to playing single-player games because they lik the social component. Others balance what they're playing. Some people play every MMO that comes out; others only play one.
<Aisthesis> is a guild in Star Wars: the Old Republic (SWTOR). We have no official guild presence in any other games, but people do casual play in other things, like Mass Effect 3's multiplayer mode and Wildstar.
Server: In MMO parlance, it's the place that you pick to play. You're playing the same game as other people on other servers, but you can only interact and play with people on your own server. Servers are organized by timezone and player interest. Because so many activities take place in the evenings when most people are home from work, timezone is definitely a large factor in deciding where to play. You're not locked into one server, but it may be very difficult, expensive, or impossible to transfer your characters from one server to another.
Guild: A collection of people on a server which organizes itself into a governing body. Because each MMO has built-in chat and other things for people in a guild, it's very beneficial to join one. It's also important for doing regularly scheduled activities. It may even be just a good way to organize playing with your friends. In Star Wars, being in a guild gives you access to some in-game currency (raised and maintained by the guild), items, a network of players to do things with, a chat channel, and the ability to organize privileges to the guild bank, funds, and the chat channel by rank. In Aisthesis, you also get a dedicated and welcoming community, a voice server that you can use for various activities, a website, and a whole lot of fun.
Guildmaster: The person in charge of the guild, who has the Guildmaster designation and permissions in-game, and is nominally responsible for fulfilling responsibilities or delegating them both in and out of game. I'm the GM of Aisthesis, for instance. Only one of my characters has full GM permissions as Bioware designed in, and I have to be on that character to perform some of my duties.
Player: The person who has an account, sometimes with multiple characters, and has one website and voice identity.
Characters/Toons: The various characters which someone has created and can belong to any player (but there are ways you can keep track of who is who, because if there weren't chaos would ensue).
PVE: Short for player vs. environment, you group into set groups and numbers in order to do operations, or, in SWTOR, flashpoints (see below). <Aisthesis> is a large PVE guild on the Ebon Hawk server. We do not do organized flashpoints, because any configuration of people in the guild can do them. Bioware simply has not made flashpoints challenging or rewarding enough to do except when levelling, bored, or trying to get very specific gear.
PVP: Short for player vs. player, you group up or are grouped by the game into teams on separate maps where there are goals and objectives to be met, OR you challenge other players to duel (1 on 1) OR you're trying to kill people in the open world. Bioware has done a good job at making maps challenging but fun, and most of them have objectives besides KILL EVERYONE IN SIGHT so there's more strategy.
RP: Role-playing. Yeah, that's kind of what you're doing when you create characters, but you can create characters for many reasons. Only a handful of people develop a backstory for their characters and then seek out other people to interact with in-character (meaning, you're doing and saying what the character would, not necessarily what the player would). Most people will not RP with just anyone so it will not be like they are forcing you to be in character if you don't want to RP or don't give a shit. The Ebon Hawk is a PVE-RP server, meaning that open world PVP is voluntary and that PVP has at certain historical points been less-populated and/or organized than on other servers. There are a lot of RP'ers around. The cool thing about RP is, it's all in the imagination. There are many guilds who primarily do RP but they have to design their own storylines and choose where in the game to act them out; the game design does not provide any more than the bare-bones.
Class: In addition to making a race, appearance, and server choice for your new character, you also pick its class. Since you can have multiple characters you aren't locked into this choice, but you will be wasting the time you put into one character if you decide you hate it or something.
Main: The character that you, the player, prefer to play and possibly are known by to the guild. For instance, my character's name started out 'Ajantis' (long story) and I had to change it to A'jantis. So my website name is A'jantis, and that's how most people address me in Mumble and even sometimes out in the real world. And yes, they do call me AJ.
Tank: The character who, though capable of some damage to opponents and some healing (maybe), is in charge of positioning the opponents and keeping it from hitting the healers and DPS in the raid.
Healer: The character who, though capable of some damage-dealing, is primarily there to heal any damage the players take.
DPS: The character who, though maybe capable of some healing and/or tanking, is supposed to dish out the damage that actually kills the opponents.
*I'll be doing a lot more with operations and roles, so this is meant as a basic overview. Just think of each fight as a battle between keeping your group alive and killing the other group, with the three different roles playing different parts in that overall struggle. Also you can think of it as a type of choreographed performance art.
Boss: A PVE opponent or pair or group of opponents that have mechanics and a lot of health, and that drop gear (items to put on your characters).
Trash: Groups of pve opponents that are much less difficult to kill than bosses, which are spaced in between the operations bosses.
Raid/Operation: In Swtor, a sequence of 4-7 bosses and trash with three difficulty modes: normal, hard, and nightmare. These modes may not be released all at once and brand new operations come out every so often as well (the game is constantly being updated with new content).
VOIP: A low latency voice program that guilds use to congregate and communicate. Mumble, teamspeak and vent are the main ones.
Website: A lot of sites, such as Enjin and Shivtr, are specifically targeted to people with guilds. We have a Shivtr because one of the dedicated early members hated Enjin with a passion. I really do like Shivtr, though we are squatting the Aisthesis Enjin site just in case!
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