• Beefy-Tootz@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Burner feels like such an old school term. I’ve more often heard “alt”, “Smurf”, or “finsta”. The last being a portmanteau of fake Instagram account

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      An alt account is one for a different purpose. For example, work and personal, not necessarily for espousing an opinion. A smurf account is one of many designed to overwhelm a system. A finsta is for satirizing yourself or shitposting.

      And in World of Warcraft they called accounts “toons”. I’ve never understood that one.

      • FloMo@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I always remember “toons” referring to your character, rather than your account. Kind of like the “cartoon character” you’re playing is how I understood it.

        • catloaf@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          Does it let you have multiple characters under one account? I never played it, so I don’t know.

          Either way, that name never really made sense to me.

          • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            9 months ago

            Last I played years ago I think you could have 10? And that was per server, there were tons of servers to choose from, so if you wanted more, you could.

          • FloMo@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Yes, up to 10 per server, and you could have characters on multiple servers.

            I remember seeing the term even while playing pre-WoW MMO’s

      • moody@lemmings.world
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        9 months ago

        Isn’t a smurf supposed to be an account from an experienced user/player that’s meant to make them look new or lower ranked?

        Smurfing is when a high-level player trolls the lower ranks below their skill level.

        Lots of players have smurf accounts for games where high- and low-ranked players don’t get paired together, so they can play on the same team as their lower-ranked friends.

        • Instigate@aussie.zone
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          9 months ago

          This is absolutely what a ‘Smurf’ account is - someone who is very experienced or has a significant backing behind them accrued from other account(s) creating a newer account to pose as an inexperienced player in order to be matched with them. In World of Warcraft, a ‘Smurf’ is a character that you intentionally don’t let past a certain level and throw a tonne of gold and gear at so that when they come up against regular players that level they have an insane advantage.