Diablospeak

[Len the Man]

Diablospeak

Hello everybody,

I'm a student of English at the University of Ghent. As part of my exam for English language proficiency II, I have to do a presentation about 1 of a given set of linguistic subjects. One of the subjects in the list is Netspeak, so I thought I'd take that. I would start by giving a basic description and all that stuff and then start talking about gaming language and particularly "Diablospeak", as I'm most familiar with that.

It would great to hear some of your thoughts on the matter. This is aimed particularly at the more senior forum members.

For instance: it seems to me that the restricted length of game names has lead the names of items in Diablo have often been abbreviated. It's my impression that in MMOs this happens a lot less.
A very interesting case in point is the Shako. This item is so popular that the generic name (of the white item) has taken on the specific meaning of Harlequin's Crest. I'm wondering is if this has always been the case. In other words, was there a time when it was not called the Shako but some other name?

Another thing I remember reading on this forum is about the Buriza. Apparently it used to be THE bow and it was called the Cannon or something. The game was then patched and the Buriza lost its uberness and consequently its special name. If anyone can confirm this, I think it would make a strong point for language change in game language.

And it doesn't necessarily have to be about items. The fishymancer for example is a term most players will recognise and illustrates how individuals can influence this language.

Any ideas or comments are welcome. Thanks for your help,
Len

 

[mephiztophelez]

Re: Diablospeak

Another thing I remember reading on this forum is about the Buriza. Apparently it used to be THE bow and it was called the Cannon or something. The game was then patched and the Buriza lost its uberness and consequently its special name. If anyone can confirm this, I think it would make a strong point for language change in game language.

Buriza do-Kyanon is Japanese for "Blizzard Cannon".

it's still one of the better bows in the game, it's just that nowadays it's outclassed by the new 1.10 uniques (WWS) and runewords (Faith).

 

[BoD Trader1]

Re: Diablospeak

Windforce always has been and always will be THE bow for me.

I've actually seeen "harle" as in harlequin crest make a rise instead of Shako, in recent years.


BTW on OT your from ghent university. One of my closest gaming mates is also up there. He is Talman from these forums. Drop him a bell. I'll give him a headsup about you.

 

[Matt]

Re: Diablospeak

It's interesting that you refer to it as the Buriza, when in fact that's the same type of diablo-speak as the harlequin crest to shako example.

 

[BRKO1]

Re: Diablospeak


I had to do something very simillar for my exam when I was a student of English. But it was some eee...7 years ago? I will try to look for it at home.

 

[spunky]

Re: Diablospeak

Are you purely looking at abbreviations?

Obvious things pop to mind :

People yelling "glitch" in Baal games (demanding lowest level character unparty at 2nd wave)
"Top" - baal games
"Wug" - Trading
"Wuw" - Trading

Abbrevations, there are too many ... HoZ, Zaka, Zerker, BotDZ, EBotDZ, etc etc etc, literally hundreds.

 

[stephan]

Re: Diablospeak

I don't know if it is specific to Diablo, but a thing to look into might the naming of character builds.

For example: Trap-sin, Java-zon, Hammer-din. Here the first word indicates the type of build and the last syllable of the class is used to indicate that. With other classes (especially Druids and Barbarians) such naming is never used (no one speaks of Windids and Berzerkians).

Also, the 'baby' character names Assa, Ama, Pala and especially the weirder Dudu, Baba and Soso might be interesting for you.

 

[Supox]

Re: Diablospeak

IMO Shako is the most used name for Harlequin Crest and there are some pretty good reasons for that. I usually have to copy-paste the real name from somewhere to get it right (being from Finland my English is not perfect). Also the real name is just impossible to fit for game name when you create a game in Bnet for trading. Shako is basically the only way to make it to the game name.

 

[Len the Man]

Re: Diablospeak

@ stephan: I had thought about dudu and baba and I was wondering if it happened in any other games. I used to play Guild Wars a while back and I know it didn't happen there.
About the character-type names and the item names I was interested in how more popular items and characters get shorter names. From the examples you give Hammer-din can also be H-din, but say a javazon could never be a J-zon. And for items you have HoZ but you could never have say Nightwing's Veil become NV.
@ spunky: no I'm not just looking for abbreviations. Anything goes really, I'm sure there's a lot of verbs for example that are specific to Diablo.
@ BRKO: if you find it that would be great.

 

[stephan]

Re: Diablospeak

About the character-type names and the item names I was interested in how more popular items and characters get shorter names. From the examples you give Hammer-din can also be H-din, but say a javazon could never be a J-zon. And for items you have HoZ but you could never have say Nightwing's Veil become NV.

But those names are already short forms by themselves. Hammerdin is a contraction for Blessed Hammer Paladin.

 

[TenYearsGone]

Re: Diablospeak

Back in the day on these very forums, everyone would would use colors when mentioning unique or set items. So the Shako would be [burlywood]Shako[/burlywood] represented by its golden color. I wouldn't be surprised if that added to the nickname as it takes too long to type the proper name (as already mentioned).

Since colors have been turned off, it is no longer represented in color, but the name has stuck.

 

[Knarlfist]

Re: Diablospeak

I can also vouch that back in the day (I first started playing D2 around 1.08), that Shako was more often called Harley. Not that it was any less confusing for the newer players, especially the 1st time they would get a white Shako to drop and try to sell it without realizing that it wasn't what people wanted.

Used to be an epidemic to fool newer players by putting Lore into a 2 socket Shako and selling it..... not as many used web resources back then or didn't know what a real Harley was. Thank god that now Harleys are so flooded in the market, that even a fairly new player would not be fooled by something like that.

 

[Len the Man]

Re: Diablospeak

@ TenYearsGone & Knarlfist: Thanks for that, you're a great help.

Something else I'd like to talk about is the degree of control that the different parties have over evolutions within Diablospeak. To what degree is Blizzard responsible for the vocabulary and how much can the community move away from the frame that Blizzard gave them.

On this point the fishymancer was an example I thought I'd use. As a build name it differs from many of the other ones on a critical point: it does not give any idea of what the build is like other than saying it's a necromancer. Even in H-din the H still refers back to the skill the build is based around, here the build is named after its inventor.
Can anyone think of similar examples where the community has come up with names/terms for things that differ highly from what Blizzard gave us?

Thanks again,
Len

 

[Knarlfist]

Re: Diablospeak

jeez... just think about all that soso baba crud.

I guess you can argue that the Blizz framers have influence over the lingo to a degree, everyone of these terms has to start somewhere before it begins it's eventual evolution, and it's very rare to see a term that has no recognizable connection (even Fishymancer could garner a generalized guess from newer players, just from the mancer part).

But apart from Blizz's intent in naming items to hint at some obscure mythological reference, or their little jokes (Dirk Diggler for instance), I guarantee there is NO way they could predict or influence most of the changes in lingo brought on by things like players from Korea/Tawain, or lazy shortenings of names by leetspeak youngin's =p

 

[TopHatCat64]

Re: Diablospeak

Another interesting aspect of Diablospeak is how the actual game sounds influenced the language.

Horking: When people talk about using Find Item with their barb, they say their going to "hork" the corpse. Almost no one will say "I'm going to use Find Item on corpses", it's always "I'm going to hork the corpses". No where in any of Blizzard's official lore does that word come up. I imagine it came about since that's roughly the sound the barb makes when he uses the skill.

 

[Majaii]

Re: Diablospeak

Another interesting aspect of Diablospeak is how the actual game sounds influenced the language.

Horking: When people talk about using Find Item with their barb, they say their going to "hork" the corpse. Almost no one will say "I'm going to use Find Item on corpses", it's always "I'm going to hork the corpses". No where in any of Blizzard's official lore does that word come up. I imagine it came about since that's roughly the sound the barb makes when he uses the skill.

I agree with you in principle, but I don't think "hork" is a good example. Hork has been used as slang for steal from before Diablo II afaik. I first heard it from the movie strange brew, which was 1983 eh.

 

[TopHatCat64]

Re: Diablospeak

I agree with you in principle, but I don't think "hork" is a good example. Hork has been used as slang for steal from before Diablo II afaik. I first heard it from the movie strange brew, which was 1983 eh.

Really? I've never heard of the word until I started playing D2. Also you're not exactly stealing the items since well...the monsters kinda lost the rights to their loot once you put them face down. :badteeth:

 

[Majaii]

Re: Diablospeak

Really? I've never heard of the word until I started playing D2. Also you're not exactly stealing the items since well...the monsters kinda lost the rights to their loot once you put them face down. :badteeth:

Well according to Urban Dictionary, the number one slang for hork is: to loot a corpse. So maybe Dii and other games like it have now changed the slang to mean that more then just steal. Who knows, I mostly commented on it cause I remembered it from Strange brew.

"someone horked our clothes! Who would wanna hork our clothes eh?"

Bob and Doug McKenzie FTW!! lol

 

[Knarlfist]

Re: Diablospeak

Obviously you guys have never tried reaching between the legs of a dead corpse and pulling loot from it's ...... uhhhh, from where they hide their loot.

That suction sound is where the hork comes from :O

 

[Len the Man]

Re: Diablospeak

Majaii, you agree with TopHatCat64 on principle right? So what do you think would be a better example?