Second post on World versus World, this time I will try to make some sense of the technobabble you will encounter on the team/map chat there. Most of this has grown over the months, or is simply because it's shortest/easiest for a place.

 

First off: the placenames. Even though a place may be called 'Etheron Hills' on the map, everyone will refer to it as just 'Hills'. Why? Because in another borderland it will be called Askalion Hills... The only part that is actually consequent is the Hills bit. The same with Briar, Lake and Bay. Since you're already on a map, there is only 1 Bay, thus no further specification is needed. (in case someone comes and tells you about another bay being attacked, they usually tell you on which borderlands it is)

Borderlands map explained

What does this map show? Placenames of course, and the paths of the dolyaks (see the first episode of the WvW set). Gates are shown as a blue dot, and if a dolyak passes a gate, it of course services that tower, provided it's owned by the colour of the yak.

Another interesting point is the GvG area, where guilds tend to duke it out. For those not in a warring guild, it's a bad place to be, but the camp itself is safe enough. The areas in the center (where the quaggan nodes were until a few weeks ago) are still so new that they have no shorthand name yet, so maybe this text needs upgrading soon.


Another bunch of shorthands comes from either guilds (generally referred to by their [tag]), or other servers. MS is Millers Sound for example, which we are fighting as I type this.

RS = RiverSide

MS = Millers Sound

AM = Abbadons Mouth, unofficially known as Blobbadon

FS = Far Shiverpeaks, et cetera.

Oh, and of course, we are from AG :)

Technobabble an sich comes from commanders, asking you to stack up (grouphug his icon), or place certain fields (water, fire or lightning usually), and blast them, so the whole group within a circle gets a nice bonus, such as a speedboost. Portalbombs are a specific tactic, where a team instead of charging into another team places a portal in their middle out of which they appear. Very effective against unexperienced groups, however the tactic can fail horribly if a few know how to handle it (as soon as you see the portal light up, blast the hell out of it ;) ). AoE (usually also pronounced as such) is Area of Effect, which means that a spell targets a certain area instead of just 1 person, is often used to scare enemies from walls or choke points (bridges, gaps etc). Pulling people off a wall can be done by mesmers by collapsing a temporal curtain. Lines of Warding (guardian staff) are used to stop enemy advance, and can cause a nice headache if you push through them ;) Stability refers to any skill that prevents you getting knocked down, grappled or frozen on site, which is useful when you are facing a large amount of enemies, who will most likely use such things to annoy the hell out of you. Last of the whole set is TS, or TS3 or just TeamSpeak. Although we use mumble as a guild, our server has its own dedicated WvW talking heads on Teamspeak (details usually on the website, as of now found on IP 176.9.65.113 ). Most commanders on peak hours will be on here, since it's a lot easier to speak than to write.

By the way, most tricks I mentioned also work wonders when fighting common monsters, especially fields and their buffs. Enjoy finding all of the possible combos!