Commonly Misspelled WoW Words
Posted by 
Heartbourne on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 - 173 Comments Tags: ogrimmar, rant, spelling, trade chat
Heartbourne on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 - 173 Comments Tags: ogrimmar, rant, spelling, trade chat
UPDATE:
Usually my posts get a dozen or so comments. Lo and behold when I logged in today to see over 30 angry comments on this post.
Project Lore represents a variety of players and backgrounds. Sometimes the difference between preaching to guildmates and writing posts vanishes in my mind and I realize I'm not talking to players who are exactly like me. The comments brought up many good points; some players are casual and haven't had time or care to learn all the jargon, while others are non-native English speakers or have speech disorders like dyslexia.
While I stand by the thesis of my post that communicating clearly with proper spelling and grammar will make you stand out in busy channels like Trade or LFG, the counter-response is well taken. Some players PUG people often and would rather get a group going as fast as possible than nitpick. Some players play on less populated servers and don't have the same type of Trade or LFG channels that are flooded with spam.
This is all true and I should have taken these things into account before publishing that post. I'll leave this post up for posterity, but I want everyone to understand that this is a rant stemming from personally dealing with novice players and wasting hours in instances from PUGing inexperienced players and this does not reflect on all of the writers or staff of Project Lore. I myself make spelling and grammar mistakes, and this post and many of my others are full of them. I leave the ones I found as is and highlight them to show that everyone makes mistakes, even when their message is carefully thought out.
Nothing makes you look more like a novice when desperately trying to PUG a heroic group than misspelling some simple words. Many players opt to leave the spam-ridden trade channel because there is little value in seeing statements like "LF Haels and tnak h occulus pst". If one cannot type simple four letter words, then many players will have doubts about that individual's ability to play effectively.
One of the most commonly misspelled words as of late is "dual". Many players talking about "dual wielding" or "dual specs" as "duel wielding" or "duel specs". A duel in WoW is a simple fight to the death between two players. Dual implies that there are two of something, namely weapons in your hands or specs that you switch between (ending a sentence with a preposition).
Another one that died out pretty early in WoW's lifespan but creeps up occasionally is rogue. If anyone is in trade looking for a "rouge" to open their lockbox, I would sooner ignore them than waste a hearthstone cooldown and my time going from Dalaran to Orgrimmar and back to help someone who doesn't take their time to proofread their sentences.
And while we are on the subject of Orgrimmar, note that there are two R's (three R's n00b!). The city is not "Ogrimmar" nor "Orgimmar". If someone is looking for an enchant in "ogrimmar" I do not know where to meet them, and I don't waste my time trying to speak with such an illiterate individual.
Everyone's least favorite dungeon, Oculus, is one that is difficult to PUG and misspelled more often than not. Note that there is one C. It is not "occulus". Occulus guards the Caverns of Time. Oculus is a dungeon located in Coldarra.
Now I know that everyone makes mistakes and there are some younger players who haven't yet developed their typing skills. However, the road to level 80 is long your first time through and you learn many things while leveling. You should learn common terminology well. People who correct their spelling with an asterisk gain a little bit of respect in my book, even though they further spam up my chatlog so I have to scroll around when looking back at other, more relevant messages. If I am about to spend 1-3 hours in a dungeon with 5 people I don't know, I'm not taking risks on someone who cannot spell simple words correctly. Stay alert!
What are your opinions? Have you found a good guild and left trade/general chat, or do you still revel in that cross-city chat?
Usually my posts get a dozen or so comments. Lo and behold when I logged in today to see over 30 angry comments on this post.
Project Lore represents a variety of players and backgrounds. Sometimes the difference between preaching to guildmates and writing posts vanishes in my mind and I realize I'm not talking to players who are exactly like me. The comments brought up many good points; some players are casual and haven't had time or care to learn all the jargon, while others are non-native English speakers or have speech disorders like dyslexia.
While I stand by the thesis of my post that communicating clearly with proper spelling and grammar will make you stand out in busy channels like Trade or LFG, the counter-response is well taken. Some players PUG people often and would rather get a group going as fast as possible than nitpick. Some players play on less populated servers and don't have the same type of Trade or LFG channels that are flooded with spam.
This is all true and I should have taken these things into account before publishing that post. I'll leave this post up for posterity, but I want everyone to understand that this is a rant stemming from personally dealing with novice players and wasting hours in instances from PUGing inexperienced players and this does not reflect on all of the writers or staff of Project Lore. I myself make spelling and grammar mistakes, and this post and many of my others are full of them. I leave the ones I found as is and highlight them to show that everyone makes mistakes, even when their message is carefully thought out.
Nothing makes you look more like a novice when desperately trying to PUG a heroic group than misspelling some simple words. Many players opt to leave the spam-ridden trade channel because there is little value in seeing statements like "LF Haels and tnak h occulus pst". If one cannot type simple four letter words, then many players will have doubts about that individual's ability to play effectively.
One of the most commonly misspelled words as of late is "dual". Many players talking about "dual wielding" or "dual specs" as "duel wielding" or "duel specs". A duel in WoW is a simple fight to the death between two players. Dual implies that there are two of something, namely weapons in your hands or specs that you switch between (ending a sentence with a preposition).
Another one that died out pretty early in WoW's lifespan but creeps up occasionally is rogue. If anyone is in trade looking for a "rouge" to open their lockbox, I would sooner ignore them than waste a hearthstone cooldown and my time going from Dalaran to Orgrimmar and back to help someone who doesn't take their time to proofread their sentences.
And while we are on the subject of Orgrimmar, note that there are two R's (three R's n00b!). The city is not "Ogrimmar" nor "Orgimmar". If someone is looking for an enchant in "ogrimmar" I do not know where to meet them, and I don't waste my time trying to speak with such an illiterate individual.
Everyone's least favorite dungeon, Oculus, is one that is difficult to PUG and misspelled more often than not. Note that there is one C. It is not "occulus". Occulus guards the Caverns of Time. Oculus is a dungeon located in Coldarra.
Now I know that everyone makes mistakes and there are some younger players who haven't yet developed their typing skills. However, the road to level 80 is long your first time through and you learn many things while leveling. You should learn common terminology well. People who correct their spelling with an asterisk gain a little bit of respect in my book, even though they further spam up my chatlog so I have to scroll around when looking back at other, more relevant messages. If I am about to spend 1-3 hours in a dungeon with 5 people I don't know, I'm not taking risks on someone who cannot spell simple words correctly. Stay alert!
What are your opinions? Have you found a good guild and left trade/general chat, or do you still revel in that cross-city chat?
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Reader Comments (173)
I love when new level 19-23s are LFG DM... even though I know they mean Deadmines I always feel the need to comment on how they are way to low for dire maul and should try VC instead then /leave 2 due to level 19-23s not knowing that "VanCleef" is not abbreviated DM due to Dire Maul taking that abbreviation.
Personally, I kinda agree with Heartbourne.
On minor mistakes, when one misspells a word, I don't really care, happens to me, too, usually when it regards ORgrimmar, I say Ogrimmar, it's a bad habit.
But, when one kills the whole post...Well, that's a whole other problem.
Oh, by the way, regarding "rogue". I think that people misspell because it's pronounced r-o-u-g. My opinion.
Cheers.
And no, I am not "anti new player", I just feel that if you are going to write shorthanded, know what your writing first... if you are unsure just write the full name, sure it may take a few extra keystrokes, but no one is going to not go just because you spelled out the name of the instance, but people will not go if your advertising the wrong instance from miss abbreviating it.
I agree and disagree, while I get where you are coming from some of the things in WoW are really hard to spell... Good example is in fact Orgrimmar I mean really it is hard to spell... Look at it... It is even hard to say for someone who doesn't play Warcraft.
Oh man i do hate when people say rouge though that always makes me not want to listen to them
Oh and just one last thing (that I didn't notice till now) Did you intentionally tag it "ogrimmar" so that people searching via a typo would come across it, or was that a typo on your part? you missed an "r" if it was a typo on your part unintentionally... It's a question not a "well you do it too", was that on purpose?
It was on purpose; on the off chance someone searched for "ogrimmar" I though it would be humorous to bring up this post.
I used to be on the newsgroups and there people have a simple rule which I believe Implies to all of internet: you don't make remarks on spelling errors, it is simply not done. If you really want to correct someone's grammar then go teach at a school
Some of my guildies are, in fact dislectic, but most of them are just plain lazy, so as long as I understand what they're trying to tell me, it's all good. Same goes from anyone else outside of the guild, unless it's some random person who wants me to boost them or give them some gold. I ignore those people even if they DO manage to spell "plz 1g plz" correctly.
I play on an EU server and some people haven't got English as their first language. I'm sure it's the same on the US servers, and it will be on the Korean servers as well. You can't really say something like that because you are criticising thousands of people for doing something they aren't 100% sure how to do. Just because you speak English, it doesn't mean that they should speak it perfectly either.
If you have a problem how they speak your language, you go and speak their language for a while and see how you get on.
At the end of the day, WoW is a game. People go there to relax. My spelling and grammar lapses when I'm playing because I want to have fun and not scrutinize every single thing I type because it may not be grammatically correct. You can't tell people that they can't talk how they want. If anything, from my experience, people who speak with perfect grammar all the time in the game are usually thought of as being a little bit weird, because they aren't acting like everyone else.
If you have a problem with someone's language, go learn it yourself and find out how hard it is to get it perfect.
One big problem i have is not the spelling but the typing .I find that the speed required sometimes in insstances will allow frequent misspelling , Noone is here for grammer or spelling or english lessons , Its a game . I feel if you are so arrogant as to think mistakes can't be made and so unforgiving that you cant over look those faults , then I really am glad I am not in your guild . Our guild is a family Guild made up of misspellers, mistypers, misnomers , misnamers , you name it we see each other for what we are less than perfect individuals and forgiving . I also will ask them to clarify instead of simply ignoring them simply because of a failure to proofread. SO all you misspellers and mistypers Rock on ignore those people who pick on you because you simply made a error, Join a forgiving guild a fun guild there are a lot more people out there that will over look your mistakes than those that will crucify you because of them .
Wow. That people can get so worked up about one persons views on spelling. From a blog-writer like Heartbourne a expect to get these slightly/very provoking posts simply to start a discussion or get people to start thinking.
Spelling really is a big deal from the looks of things...
okay two things
1) I agree with some of these comments, especially some that saying that it wasn't such a smart idea to post this blog even if it is because of what a lot of other people are saying, some completely insulting, some a little less worse.
but however
2) I agree with Heartbourne, people who are constantly misspelling words are often not answered by me, I know I make mistakes some times, I know my guild makes mistakes some times, hell one of my best friends has dyslexia... when they (they are my guildies and friends) say things wrong I say to them what the real spelling is. now if everyone did a better spelling I can see faster if I can help them, for instance Person A says "I'm searching for a BS to make me a Belt Buckle" than I can see in a fast way that I can't help him with that but when Person B says "I saerhes fro a BS to mkae me a blet bcukle" then I first have to correct all of his spelling to see if I can help him.
however if someone makes a little mistake like occulus or ogrimar than I can see past it cause mostly it looks the same, or it could be a typo because of fast typing
one other thing, why do a lot of people say constantly "lol" at the end of there sentence ?? (not always here, but mostly on wow) cause most of the times when someone says "lol" at the end it mostly is nothing to laugh about
Personally playing on european servers..
If the server had been consisting of all English people, yes i would probably mind the misspelled words, but heck, i'd like to see you, Heart, play on a Danish or Dutch server, and not misspell words.. just saying..
Also, seeing as the chat system in WoW is instant, alot of people use it, and write the same way they talk in real life.. do you bitch at people with a lisp? Or people who says something wrong? Na.. thought not..
/agree with Heartbourne.
I mean, if you accidentally type "Occulus", that doesn't really matter to me. But if you continuously say things like "rouge" and "enchantment shaman" it really pisses me off, and I've had very bad experiences PUGing with people who do this.
thier is one question you havent answered ayt and that is why do you care so much about spelling in a game if you can under stand the person why bug him then or ignore him or kick him why are making such a big deal of it grow up for god sake
i dont care about things like "tnak""haels" or even "teh", but id does bug me when people mispronounce place names and character names when they have been told how too, but i usualy dont say anything about it
Heartbourne
if you want to look like an samrt ass use your brain
the brain DO NOT see spellings it see words
this is a fact
learn to have fun and not be jugmental
I AM MAD! May be some ppl are not from english speaking country like you and ofc I'll missspell!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am f*cking mad!
+ that I remmember 10000 idiots who "GTFO noob learn to spell..." is that I cant talk english so well making me a worse player? So pay attantion on your next blog..
Haha Alex said Ogre-mar in one of the episodes
"I will not spam trade chat about my failing pick up group group." XD
This is ridiculous. Dont you have anything better to write about. Heartbourne, from now on I'm not going to read any of your blog posts.
Dont get why people get so angry about this really. If you're trying to get a good group together for a heroic or raid you shouldnt check how they write but which guild they are in their gear and achievements... Then it doesnt matter if he spells good or bad as long as he knows his thing.
Heartbourne i totally agree with you.
I understand that the purpose of your post is to educate people. Been there, done that. It's useless.
The levels of arrogance and ignorance are sky high. I'm starting to believe that making obvious grammar mistakes is a new trend.
FIRST!!!
=)