A Gamer's Lexicon - Entry 3 - Special Everquest Edition!

Screenshot from Everquest

A Gamer's Lexicon series touches upon terms players use in video games. The terms here mostly come from my experiences in the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) Everquest. This series will hopefully help the non-gamers understand some of the terms gamers use. And gamers may find it humorous as well! If you have any gaming terms (from any type of video game or table top gaming) you would like me to address in the future, or if you think I should add something to already defined terms, please post in the comments--I may ask you to define a term though, if it isn't one I've come across before. Happy hunting!

The previous terms in A Gamer's Lexicon series can be found here:

Entry 1: RNG, RNG Gods, mob, loot, wipe
Entry 2: Newb/Newbie, Noob, Aggro, Train, KoS

Welcome to the special Everquest Edition of A Gamer's Lexicon! Everquest recently released its 19th expansion (crazy, isn't it?), so I thought it was a good time to focus solely on some Everquest-only terms.

EQ - Everquest.

Evercrack - This one might be self-explanatory. ;) Many people refer to Everquest as Evercrack, as it can be quite the addiction!

Lesson of the Devoted - Also simply called Lesson or LotD, this is a veteran reward that allows players 30 minutes of double experience gain every 20 hours. Veteran rewards are for long standing players, a different award given for every year (cumulatively) you have played/paid for Everquest. Lesson is the 1-year reward. When people activate the ability, they may say something like: "Popping Lesson" or "Burning Lesson".

DOOM - Yes, all caps. Could mean anything, right? Well, for Everquest players it's related to Lesson. When people pop lessons while killing mobs, they may call it DOOM because some consider it unlucky! For some reason, there tends to be a higher chance of death when you are burning your Lesson (this is likely simple coincidence). The RNG Gods seem to think that wipes are more amusing when Lessons are popped. =P

Rat Killer - This was a nickname for Everquest when it was first released! I didn't start playing until several expansions later, but I heard when EQ first came out, it was mostly people chasing after rats!

And the coup de grâce of this post--the list of expansion abbreviations! Hang tight, 19 expansions makes this list a long one!

RoK or Kunark - The Ruins of Kunark

SoV or Velious - The Scars of Velious

SoL or Luclin - The Shadows of Luclin

PoP or POP - The Planes of Power

LoY or Ykesha - The Legacy of Ykesha

LDoN - Lost Dungeons of Norrath

GoD or GOD or Gates - Gates of Discord

OoW or Omens - Omens of War

DoN - Dragons of Norrath

DoD - Depths of Darkhollow

PoR - Prophecy of Ro

TSS - The Serpent's Spine

TBS - The Buried Sea

SoF - Secrets of Faydwer

SoD - Seeds of Destruction

UF - Underfoot

HoT - House of Thule

VoA - Veil of Alaris

RoF - Rain of Fear

And word is that they will be releasing content differently in the future. Is it the end of the expansion acronyms? We'll see! But I think Everquest still has quite a few years left in it.

Speaking of EQ, time to log in and nuke some mobs!

NEXT UP: The Sims 3 - Lavender Legacy, Chapter 1 - Meet Lila Lavender! - I lied! It will actually be Magic is Reality, Reality is Magic: Yule

Do You Speak Simlish?

Your friendly monthly update here!

NaNoWriMo was a bust, per usual, but I think in 2013 I'm going to pick a better month and see if I can hit 50k words then. Getting into the winter and the holidays my writing productivity drops for various reasons (family, life, the urge to hibernate, etc.), so a spring month would be so much better than November! Still, I have a complete rough draft of one Fate short done, and the start of another--can't say I didn't get anything done.

I've also been attempting to organize my house. For me, I feel if things are tidy around me, my brain will work better and be less panicked. I have yet to prove this theory because the house is always a mess. However, I'm making better progress than usual. This month my study WILL get completely cleaned, including the endless papers.

This month I also hope to get back to sending some short stories out, as well as maybe prepping another story to be indie published (or maybe two in one!). It won't be released until 2013, though, most likely. I also plan to get back to revisions of Dead As Dreams.

So, are you still wondering what the title of this blog post means? OK, I give.

I recently purchased The Sims 3 along with the Supernatural expansion. Many people on The Sims 3 website like to do Family Challenges or post stories of their Sim families. And I thought it would be fun trying that out as a series here on my blog--starting with chapters in the life of the Lavender family, the progenitor being a fairy named Lila.

Now, I know some people may be skeptical over this. I will be telling more than showing (a big no-no usually when writing fiction), but I think it will be a fun exercise! And it will definitely have the fantasy slant to it (which makes it far more interesting, in my opinion). I likely won't post a chapter more than once per month, depending on how much time I have to play the game--right now I'm trying to play for a couple hours each week.

That means you all have the first chapter on the Lavender Lineage to look forward to this month! As well as a post about Yule. Oh, and a special edition of the Gamer's Lexicon too.

Don't forget to join us over at Writing Quest - December! Happy writing and reading. =)

NEXT UP: An entry in the Gamer's Lexicon! What game was nicknamed Rat Killer when it was first released?

NaNo Update #2 - Scatterbrained

Life loves to get in the way of writing.

I got sick a little over a week ago, and then I started to get better right when the Thanksgiving prep time hit, and after Turkey Day, my husband and I needed to wind down. This means, I have no new words to add to my total.

My goal for before Friday is to at least finish the rough draft of the second Fate story. It's not a crazy goal, likely only around 5,000 words max, so it should be doable.

The holidays have my head spinning, and I have a lot of other things that need to be taken care of outside of writing, so we'll see when I find time to start making progress on the word count.

Who decided it would be a good idea to have NaNoWriMo in November? One of the worst months for it!

In any case, as you can see, this is a brief update. I'll have a monthly update on Saturday, and you'll find out what I plan to do for another blog series. =)

NEXT UP: Monthly Update