The World of Warcraft Gold Making Glossary

Sometimes reading about gold making can seem like just a bunch of alphabet soup with GEEs, MFCs, TSMs and GHPs. This glossary is our attempt at bringing those who may be new to the gold-making up to speed.

Didn't find the term you are looking for? Have a suggested addition to the Glossary? Let us know by sending an email to [email protected].

-A-

• AH - Auction House
• Agg/Aggro - The act of maintaining the attention of of mobs your party is attacking. Also used as a measure of the attention a mob is paying to any particular party member.
• Alt - Alternate Character, A character that is not a players main character. See also "Main".
• Arbitrage - The act of selling an item acquired from one faction to the other (i.e. Selling items from the Alliance on the Horde auction house.) Can be done via the neutral auction house or main faction auction houses (if the item is first transfered via the neutral auction house).

-B-

• Ban - To have one's account temporarily or permanently banned by Blizzard generally due to players performing actions against the World of Warcraft terms of service.
• Bans/Ban Wave - Large groups of bans done by Blizzard. Seem to happen around patches/server resets.
• Bark/Barking - The act of advertising your items for sale generally in trade chat. Often used when selling items that wouldn't sell as well without barking such as Mysterious Fortune Cards, Dust of Disappearance, etc.
• Blue Gems - Rare quality gems, The word "blue" in this case generally refers to the color of the item's text in-game and indicates rarity. May also refer to a gem which is actually blue (i.e. Zephyrite)
• Blues - 1) Items that are fairly powerful in statistics and power. These items fall into the "Rare" category in the item hierarchy. They are indicated in-game with item text colored blue. 2) The name for so-called "blue-posters" who are Blizzard developers and employees who post officially on the World of Warcraft forums. The color of their post text has a blue color in the forums hence the name.\
• BOA - Bind on Account, Items that can be traded/mailed to all characters on a players account including across faction via mail (on the same server).
• BOE - Bind on Equip, An item that will become soulbound when equipped. BOE items can be traded/sold to other players.
• BOP - Bind on Pickup, Items that become soulbound when the player loots them. These items cannot be traded/sold to other players.
• Bot - Generally used to describe a player who utilizes automated software to play World of Warcraft. Bots can perform such functions as mining, herbing and posting/cancelling auctions. All forms of botting are against the Blizzard terms of service and can result in permanent bans.
• BS - Blacksmithing/Blacksmith

-C-

• Camper - Someone who spends an inordinate amount of time canceling and reposting auctions on the auction house.
• Camping - Spending large amounts of time dedicated to a single task. Could be camping the auction house to cancel/re-post undercut auctions of camping the spawn location of a rare spawn mob. See also: "Rare".
• CD - Cooldown, The time before you can use a spell or profession skill again.
• Cross-faction - See "Arbitrage".

-D-

• Datamined - The name given information that is "mined" from the game data files by websites such as MMO Champion. Often this is performed on PTR game files and can be one of the earliest sources of information on upcoming changes that may effect the economy. See also "PTR".
• DE - Disenchant, The act of breaking an item down into enchanting materials. Done by Enchanters with the "Disenchant" spell.
• DPS - Damage Per Second, Used to denote both a class that deals damage (as opposed to healing or tanking) as well as the amount of damage done to a mob per second. A measure of overall damage dealing potential.

-E-

• Ench - Enchanting/Enchanter
• Eng - Engineering/Engineer
• Epics - Items that are superiour to nearly all other items as far as stats and power. The item names in0game are shown in a purple color in game hence the nick name "Purples".
• EXP - Experience, See "XP".

-F-

• Faceroll - Something that is so easy you could do it by simply rolling one's face across the keyboard. Historical examples of WoW classes thought to be "Faceroll" include Retribution Paladins (in Wrath of the Lick King), Hunters and Death Knights.
• Faid - 1) A backronym for "Die In A Fire" spelled backwards. 2) An entity that clearly needs to be nerfed.
• FFA - Free For All, A group loot setting where everyone can loot everything regardless of who killed the mob.
• Flip/Flipping - The act of buying an item (usually via trade chat or the auction house) with the intent to sell it at a higher price. 
• Flooding/Flooded - 1) The act of posting large numbers of items on the auction house. May be for cheap or regular prices. 2) A market which has an extremely high volume of sellers selling a large number of the same items. Markets that are "flooded" can be known to give smaller profits due to the high competition.

-G-

• GCE - Greater Celestial Essence, Enchanting material
• GDKP - Gold Dragon Kill Points. A raid run where the participants bid against each other on loot drops with gold. The gold is traded to one member of the raid (generally the leader) and at the end of the run the total sum of gold used to purchase drops is divided equally among the members of the raid.
• GEE - Greater Eternal Essence, Enchanting material
• Goblin - 1) Used to describe a player who focuses on making money in World of Warcraft. Goblin NPCs are often portraied as being greedy and money-grubbing. 2) A character that is of the goblin race.
• Gold Cap - The point at which a cahracter can no longer acquire additional gold. The current gold cap is 999,999g 99s 99c (one copper short of 1 million gold). Before Patch 4.0.1 the gold cap was 214,748g 36s 47c.
• Gold Capped - The state of a player having reached 999,999g 99s 99c on one or multiple simultaneous characters at one time.
• GPH - Gold Per Hour, a measurement of actual (or average) gold acquired in one hour.
• Green Gems - Uncommon quality gems, The word "green" in this case generally refers to the color of the item's text in game and indicates rarity. May also refer to a gem which is actually green (i.e. Jasper).
• GFTO - Go Try French Opera. Also used to to indicate "Get The #%$& Out!". Generally used to tell someone to leave you alone or as an expression of extreme disbelief. Variations include GTFOOTF - "Get The #%$& Out Of The Fire" which generally indicates you may be standing in something which will likely kill you.

-H-

• Healer - The party member who's main role is healing damage done to their party members especially the tank.
• Heirloom - BOA items that are designed to make leveling an alt faster. Their stats adjust to the level of the player wearing them (i.e. they scale as the character levels up). See also "BOA".
• Hotfix - A change made in the game by Blizzard that does not require players to download a game client update. Hotfix changes may be documented or undocumented.

I

-J-

• JC - Jewelcrafting/Jewelcrafter.
• JIT - Just-In-Time, The technique of buying only the exact amout of materials needed at the moment.
• Jokine - 1) Past co-host of the Power Word: Gold podcast. 2) "Awesome".

-K-

• kk - OK, Modified version of OK. Origins unknown. Likley due to "kk" being slightly faster to type than "ok".

-L-

• LF - "Looking for", Commonly used in in-game trade chat channels. "LF Blacksmith..."
• LFG - "Looking for group"
• LW - Leatherworking/Leatherworker

-M-

• Main - A player's main character. Generally the character played the most. Often has the best gear, most gold, etc. See also "Alt".
• Mats - Materials. Generally used to describe materials used to create items via crafting professions.
• MFC - Mysterious Fortune Card, Crafted by Inscription. Can be "flipped" to receive a "Fortune Card" worth 10s-5000g.
• Mob - Mobile, A generic term for any non-player entity whose primary purpose is to be killed for experience, quest objective, or loot. (source)

-N-

• NPC - Non-player character, Any entity in the game that isn't controlled by a player. Includes mobs, vendors, etc.

-O-

• OBO - Or best offer. Used when selling an item to indicate you are willing to accept less than the asking price. (May also mean willing to take the highest offer OVER the asking price.)
• Obsidium Shuffle - The act of prospecting Obsidium/Elementium Ore and using the resulting gems to make profit via selling gems, crafting jewelery/disenchanting or transmuting.
• ofc - Of course, Generally used as indicating a statement of the obvious.
• omw - On my way. Used to let a player know you are coming to their location.
• ONO - Or nearest offer. See "OBO".
• OP - Over-Powered, Something is extremely imbalanced or powerful

-P-

• Price Floor - The price at which 100% of the value of a material can be recouped by selling some variation of the product to a vendor. (i.e. The current price floor for Obsidium Ore is ~30g per 20 stack. This is calculated by multiplying the average number of uncommon gems obtained via prospecting (6) by the vendor price of cut uncommon gems (5 gold).)
• Proc - Procedure/Procedural - Generally used in gold-making to mean the special ability of crafting spells to generate extra unexpected materials. Examples include Transmute Specialization Alchemists who can "proc" extra Volatiles while using "Transmute: Living Elements" or the Guild Level 23 perk "Bountiful Bags" which enables Enchantersdisenchanting items to "proc" extra enchanting materials.
• PST - Please send tell, A request to send the player an in-game message (AKA whisper).
• PTR - Public Test Realm, The servers where Blizzard allows players to test out new World of Warcraft peaches before they are released. Can often be a good source of early information on changes that may effect the economy.
• Purples - See "Epics"
• Pwn/Pwned - Own/Owned. Pronounced "poe-n" or "poe-nd". A corrupted "leet speak" version of the word "owned". Generally used to describe something was dominated or defeated. Usage: "You got PWNED!". (Warning: link contains NSFW languange).

Q

-R-

• Rare/Rare Spawn - An NPC which spawns in a certain location (or locations) and has a relatively long respawn timer. Often drops valuable or unique loot.
• RNG - Random Number Generator. Mainly used in reference to the system wherein the loot dropped from a boss is randomly chosen from a pre-defined list. The term "RNG" is often used when referring to the chances of have an item drop or the mechanism for having an item drop. "RNG was against me." or "I'm having bad RNG tonight." "The RNG gods must be angry at me tonight."

-S-

• Shuffle/Shuffling - The act of converting a raw material (ore, herbs, etc.) into a more profitable material via various profession processes (jewelcrafting, alchemy, enchating, etc). A few popular "shuffles" are the "Obsidium Shuffle" and the "Saronite Shuffle". See also "Obsidium Shuffle".
• soz - Sorry. A slang version of the word "sorry". Meant as an apology.
• Stockpile/Stockpiling - Saving/storing large quantities of a material. Can be used to even-out market price fluctuations. Also used to prepare for a potential price/demand increase (such as changes brought by a patch/hotfix etc).

-T-

• Tank - A party member whose primary role is keeping the attention (See "Aggro") of the mobs the party is attacking.
• Toon - Any player character. Thought to be a shortened version of "cartoon".
• TSM - TradeSkillMaster, An addon used for crafting and auctioneering.
• Transmute - Any of the Alchemy skills that allow you to convert one type of material into another (i.e. Transmute: Living Elements). Commonly used to convert a lower-value material into a higher-value material.
• Twink - Generally a lower level (19, 29, etc) character built specifically to excel at PVP battlegrounds. High-level players will often spend great amounts of time and gold "twinking" their these characters getting them the absolute best armor, weapons and enchants available at their level.

-U-

• Undercut - To place an auction up at a lower buy out/bid amount than someone else. Severity of undercuts can very from as little as 1 copper to hundreds of gold depending on the item value and auctioneer's selling strategy.
• Undercutter - Generally considered to be someone who consistently undercuts another's auctions.

V

-W-

• WTB - "Want To Buy", Commonly used in in-game trade chat channels.
• WTS - "Want To Sell", Commonly used in in-game trade chat channels.
• WTT - "Want To Trade", Commonly used in in-game trade chat channels.

-X-

• XP - Experience, Gained by doing quests, killing mobs, etc. Used to indication progression in level, professions etc.

Y
Z
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