[ufo]

translation: gank = ambush, farming = collecting resources without engaging against the enemy team

[xxs]

I'd have considered 'gank' a fairly known/used term.

[jlokier]

I hadn't encountered 'gank' before these comments.

But I had to look up MOBA too :-)

And I used to write multiplayer battle games for a living! And my favourite recent game was a MOBA without me knowing that was a term! Which goes to show, times change, words change, and it's easy to live outside gamer subculture, even while playing.

[seventhtiger]

That's really interesting to me. MOBAs are notoriously new player hostile, just with the sheer amount of knowledge the game demands, and the fact that a team really does rely on its members which is too much pressure for a new player (which can translate into verbal abuse from your team depending on the game's culture).

So what's the MOBA that got you interested even though you're not familiar with the genre?

[plopz]

thats surprising, its such a ubiquitous word in multiplayer games. i think i first heard it used back in the early 2000s in wc3 or wow.

[callalex]

It is only ubiquitous in MOBAs which are, frankly, a small niche of the small niche that is multiplayer competitive gaming, which is a small niche of the small niche that is online gaming, which is a small niche of the small niche which is computer gaming.

[Aachen]

I've never heard it in my life and I play games (not Dota) and get around on the internet generally. My first association was clank from hermitcraft's decked out, but that didn't quite fit. Farming is what I figured from context, though

[charcircuit]

It's such a common term around mobas that I doubt you haven't heard it before. Considering the popularity of the genre it's statistically unlikely that it hasn't come up.

[sincerely]

Unlikely things happen all the time :)

[Aachen]

I don't play mobas specifically, though

[Cyph0n]

Not for people who’ve never played MOBAs.

[xxs]

The term predates moba, it's early RTS, early MMO stuff, around late '90s, early 2000s.

[0xcde4c3db]

My memory of this long ago is fuzzy, but I believe the word itself is originally from LA gang subculture and was spread more broadly via gangsta rap in the late '80s/early '90s or so (cf. the trend of people spelling certain words with "ck" changed to "cc", which was a feature of Crips tagging). The earliest documented use I could find referred to someone selling fake drugs, but I seem to recall that as it spread it turned into a generic placeholder for just about any offense from petty theft to cold-blooded murder.

[hattmall]

Yeah it's just slang for some kind of nefarious action. It's in a lot of rap songs, west coast origin seems possible for sure but been around a long time. East coast version is juug.

[ericbarrett]

In the early 90s in NorCal, we used gank to mean "steal" or "snatch", and you can still find this definition online. I don't think it ever meant murder until it got used in PvP games.

[doikor]

MOBAs are from the 90s. But yes the terms are from RTS games (MOBAs started as custom maps to starcraft)

Aeon of Strife being the first one from 1998.

[nickthegreek]

It was a heavily used term in early WoW pvp.

[Cyph0n]

Good to know, but based on numbers, most people would have been exposed to the term through MOBAs.

[dzddd]

Most people have never played a MOBA.

[Cyph0n]

We’re going in circles here.. where did I say most people have played MOBA?

[Aachen]

I played RTSes from the late '90s as a kid but still don't know the term