Just went 'off''. Not 'afk'. After which I'll be 'wd'... maybe. Just said 'bb' but could just have well written 'b', 'bn' or gawwd help me, 'bs'. And of course, 'dks' and hear 'hwk' a lot.
The German on-line gaming community is awash with abbreviations where you think, 'Whaaaa?'
It's been a trial to my supposed intelligence, Preciousessss... yes it has. Gobbledygook in the Chat window... and yes, you can chat on line if you so please.
For over three months, I've been playing, joined a guild, and my two 'chars' are visible to everyone as they are to me... A 'char' is a 'Charakter', a figure you have in play. English or German, easy to figure out.
In my guild, the members have this annoying habit of coming on line and greeting everyone with 'Hu-hu'. (German for Yoo-hoo!) Makes me feel like a friggin' OWL...
It gets even more of a mish-mash... people might say 'hi', 'Morgen ' for good morning, or north German 'Moin' or the stiff sticklers 'Tag' (good day). Sometimes you get 'Hola'. World language has gone bonkers, in other words.
Since this past Friday, I got popular, having been seen round a lot. The advanced players don't like messing with newbies because the game becomes very difficult and slow to advance in, so most lose patience with it.
But all of a sudden... my guild leader took me under her wing. Yeah it's a she. No one was 'on' as in online, so she asked me to do a group thing with her. There are different sorts, but the one she picked was to help me gain experience and more importantly, game points. She has several figures in the game, the most advanced being at level 95... which is awesome.....
So she has a knight at my level, 'just for fun', and we went out training our dragons. And since the Bandits and the Beserkers are easy to kill... you just have to fight long enough for your pet to level up... we chatted for ninety minutes.
And I learned that she emigrated with her parents from Kasachstan when she was ten. Has a daughter, and her name is Natascha, which her grandfather decided on and registered her at the Kasach town office, her mother calls her Nathalja, and everyone 'on' calls her 'Angel'.
Shades of the old Beatles song... 'Her name was Macgill, and she called herself Lil, but everyone knew her as Nancy...' And I was sooo tempted to ask if she had a brother named Boris, but no way would she have gotten the reference to Rocky Squirrel... hee-hee-hee...
Kidding aside, she is very nice, and helpful, and we 'talked' about a lot of things while slaughtering some monsters who weren't challenging, just for game points, because the game points determine how many capability points you get, and you can't learn new ones if you don't have enough. And it turned out we'd 'spoken' before in one or the other of her guises, but I hadn't known. I guess she was sounding me out.
Just like Sven and Heike, who pop up in the most unusal guises and places, and at first I never know who I am speaking to. And it takes getting used to... I just do the two... Pip, the knight, and RenB the conjuror, which name was so lame... I had a creative low when I generated him. But everyone knows those two are both mine.
Yesterday, she got me involved in a big 'ag', and I couldn't figure out what it meant, but it was 'auto-group'. You can register, and get taken into one. Or a normal group is when you are with another character in the same place, and you split points fifty-fifty, and the loot. In an auto-group, you just register, and get taken in, and meet new people, go your own way, and chat... But groups have the advantage that you get more points together than alone. Which helps you advance faster.
If you are invited to a group, it is good form to thank the leader before leaving. Politeness counts. Yesterday another guild girl took over when Angel went 'off'.
She saw me this morning, and promptly invited me to an 'ag'. Which I hadn't known the meaning of before, being a newbie. So I drilled her on abbreviation meanings. I'd figured that 'b' was for 'bye' when leaving, and 'bb' is for 'bye-bye'... easy enough. 'WD'--finally the penny dropped.. if someone was not at the pc, they write 'wd' for 'wieder da'. 'Back again'. 'bn' means 'bis nachher' german for later. And the dreaded 'bs' means 'bis später'. Also 'till later'. 'DKS' means 'danke schön'. And 'HWK' is only when someone joins a guild or group, so I figured it out... 'herzlich Willkommen'. 'Hearty welcome! Easy... you just have to figure it out, and of course I did figure out the abbreviations on my own, except for 'ag'.
Which this new girl explained patiently, and smiled. And I finally got the courage to ask her what the hell AFK stood for. I mean, I knew it meant someone is not available, but all I could thing of was 'Außer'. Except... and nothing came to mind. She said, 'You're thinking too complicatedly. It means 'away from the keyboard', like making something to eat or not in front of the pc.' (or going potty????). I said, 'man, you people are so short circuiting the language center of my brain, english, german.... gawwd.'
That cracked her up. And had us off and running about the monsters. 'The Gnolls would be so cute... if they didn't drool so much...' 'You should give them some pocket handkerchiefs.' 'My armour has no pockets, and I'm not using my cloak! And they want to hurt Norbert.' 'They love him, so they bite.' 'Yeah, literally.'
So ok, never see lol's there, let alone omg's, and certainly not rofl's...
It's a fully bastardised set of things which, when you first see them, seem nonsensical. Different countries, different shorthand on the internets, hey.
You learn something new every day. AFK my arse....
0 Responses to "Fun with Semantics..."
Post a Comment