Online gaming has been around so long that it has even developed it's own sub-language, which includes various terms and abbreviations. Whilst this is no bad thing, and it is to be expected really, it can easily confuse newcomers to the world of online games. With that in mind, here are some of the most common online game terms and abbreviations…
P2P - This is an abbreviation of pay-to-play which is used to describe online games which you must pay the creator of the game to participate in. This payment can be for a set number of hours or, more often than not, on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis.
F2P - This means Free-to-Play and is basically a self explanatory term. You can register on the game distributors site in your country or region, get a user name and password and you can play the game. You will simply need to download the game from the distributors site and you will be able to play the game from your computer.
Bots - This term refers to those characters within a game which are being controlled by a computer rather than a human. Bots are generally more predictable than human players as they can only follow pre-determined scripts, however, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are weaker. Still, once you have learnt the typical behavior of a particular bot then they are not difficult to overcome.
NPC - This term means non-player character and this pertains to all harmless and non-monster characters in the game. These are usually the characters you approach to buy and sell weapons and armors from in the game, get quests from and learn in-game tips from.
Mobbing - This usually means that a player is killing huge numbers of monsters in a certain part of the game map to level up.
Loots / Drops - These are what characters drop after they have been killed. There are different kinds of loots or drops and the harder a character is to kill, the better the drops or loots usually are. You will find that some games have what is called rare drops and these are often dropped by special characters that take a longer time to kill.
Farming - This usually happens in conjunction with mobbing, since mobbing often produces drops or loots that are needed by players to either make in-game money or steal weapons, potions or accessories from other players. This term is also used for collecting certain materials that are hard to find and are needed for creating rare weapons or armors that can help make a character stronger.