3 years ago. Arqade works best with JavaScript enabled
Toons just..doesn't feel right.I hate doing it but I call them toons just because I am too lazy to type out characters.Because that's what they were called in EQ, and much of the early WoW culture came from EQ.No the hell they were not. What made the term popular was the commercialized marketing tactics used regularly by the Disney machine. It features animated cartoon-like characters. Sadly it carried on to other games out of habit.I was a text MUD player from 1990 (the entire Internet at the time was all text) and on through as the graphical games started to come out. That's like people saying they call all colas "coke" because it historically had cocaine in it at one time. My recollection is that the term mainly was used in out-of-game character/account Also, consider the character systems of Diablo 1 and 2.
Sir, you have earned yourself an upvote.I've always used chars. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Arqade is a question and answer site for passionate videogamers on all platforms. Detailed answers to any questions you might have
". "toons" is two syllables more efficient to speak and five characters more efficient to write.Infantile, huh? But why 'toons"?I believe the etymology of "Toon" actually predates Ultima Online. Toons just seems infantile.I call my characters 'toons' because I don't have a stick up my ass and because I don't mindlessly hate slang just because it is unfamiliar. Mats (materials or crafting ingredients) is one exception to this rule. characters actually looked like cartoons and people there called them I am generation-X, the generation that invented the internet. Your attitude is what is infantile. To this day I've never heard an MMO player who didn't spend a lot of time on WoW use the term (although to be fair, a large percentage of MMO players today @Shinrai WoW was released in late 2004.
I've heard it well before toontown. I believe the etymology of "Toon" actually predates Ultima Online. If your characters are missing in World of Warcraft, check the following steps before contacting us. "Toon" for your game characters absolutely started in The Realm
I guess that's more definitive but less fun than my answer.I always just thought it was because of the visual style of WoW, personally...that game seemed to really be the first to use it extensively. @agent86 Yeah, I've heard reference to this in Everquest.I haven't seen this before but it sounds like a term from Enders Game. Toon Town came out in 2003, I have distinct memories of seeing people use "toon" to describe their characters as early as 2001 in Asheron's Call.
In Ender's Game, Toon was actually [I believe] short for Platoon, and was used to identify the various Battle Groups and their leaders.I first heard it used in MMO's circa 2006 in Fiesta Online, a MMORPG published by Outspark. Because your characters are on your computer screen much like a cartoon character is on the television. Discuss the workings and policies of this site
This gives the customer a feeling of getting something.. you guessed it.. both familiar AND new.
"Character" is the word old RPG players have used to describe their avatar. I restored a character today…and out of curiosity I looked to see the total deleted toons I had on all realms.
It only takes a minute to sign up.I've seen that in games like MMORPGs and the Diablo series, where the player has an "arsenal" of several characters, people refer to their characters as "toons".Much of this is my opinion and recollection, but as a gamer for 25 years (MMO-gamer since Everquest) maybe I know a thing or two. "I've been hating on the word 'toon' as a description for over a decade now, and not once have I heard a single plausible theory about where it came from. Characters in The Realm were very much cartoony but I'm not sure it had a big enough population to be the origin of the phrase. While ToonTown's characters are, in fact, toons, the term has been used in earlier games. As for Pen and Paper RPG's, I still use the term Character.I have been in this industry for many years. Toon is battle school slang that means something like squad or @Zoredache while the timing is right for Ender's Game (1985), the meaning is totally different.
In Diablo2 we call them 'chars', short for characters of course. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top
:PYeah I either say alts, main, or characters. Come to think of it I don't know why it made us think people were from Europe.TL;DR There's a reason it's called the Character Select Screen. You have the wrong realm selected on the Character Select screen. I understand when people use either.Italians call them PGs. It's because there aren't any 'toons' on it.I was in a guild once that had this guy who absolutely Fun fact: they're officially called "creeps" in World of Warcraft, not that a GM wouldn't help you if you told him the quest mob wasn't spawning properly.While the terminology is second nature to me now, it Heck, I used to run CircleMUD as a door on my old BBS.all this talk of "characters" and "toons" just reminds me of Homestar Runner.Me and a whole bunch of friends came to WoW after playing Guild Wars, whom happen to have a race called the I call my characters 'characters.'
My WoW characters are missing. Use the scroll bar on the right side of the Character Select screen to scroll down. If you are a male gamer playing an Amazon or a Sorceress, calling that character a "Toon" can be a signal to others that you don't identify as that gender. You're a pretty serious WoW guy aren't you?Been playing since the game came out and I've heard people call them toons for a while.
When UO came out in 1997, it wasn't a difficult crossover to use Cartoon Avatar for the 2D avatars in UO, which was colloquially shortened to "toon. Before UO, the first IRC clients, like Cybertown and Microsoft Comic Chat, were released that allowed the use of avatars, coined Cartoon Avatars, to represent people.