The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermDigital term

Player killer (PK)

A player who attacks and kills other players' characters, especially where the game allows it but most people would rather not. Unrestricted player killing in Ultima Online (1997) sparked years of design debate, reputation systems and separate PvP servers.

A player who attacks and kills other players' characters, especially where the game allows it but most people would rather not. Unrestricted player killing in Ultima Online (1997) sparked years of design debate, reputation systems and separate PvP servers.

Quick answers

What does "Player killer (PK)" mean?
A player who attacks and kills other players' characters, especially where the game allows it but most people would rather not. Unrestricted player killing in Ultima Online (1997) sparked years of design debate, reputation systems and separate PvP servers.

Nearby in the archive

Griefing

Digital term

Deliberately harassing other players in ways the game does not intend, such as killing newcomers, stealing kills, blocking doorways or destroying player-built structures, for the pleasure of causing grief.

Painting: a bustling medieval fantasy town square crowded with hundreds of adventurers of every kind, player-built houses on the hills, a blacksmith's forge.

Ultima Online

MMORPG1997

Richard Garriott's Britannia turned into a living, lawless shared world: thousands of players building houses, running shops, and killing one another. UO popularized the MMORPG and taught a generation of designers how hard virtual societies are.

Painting: a 1978 university computer room at night, a single glowing text terminal.

MUD1

MUD1978–1999

Two Essex students turned the solitary text adventure into a shared world: MUD, where strangers met, fought and cooperated in real time on the way to Wizard rank, the seed of every online RPG since.

Lineage

MMORPG1998

A 2D feudal war of castles and blood pledges, adapted from a Korean comic, that rode the PC-bang boom to millions of subscribers and made NCSoft one of Asia's great game companies.

Virtual Economies, Gold Farming & the GDP of Norrath

Phenomenon2001

When an economist calculated in 2001 that EverQuest's Norrath had a per-capita GNP between Russia's and Bulgaria's, he revealed that fantasy worlds had grown real economies, with labor, inflation and sweatshops.

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