Why are game characters called twinks, toons or alts?

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In MMOs, many people don’t just play one hero, but several. But why are the characters abbreviated to Twink, Toon or Alt? The new trivia article from MeinMMO tells you!

If you search for “Twink” in the MeinMMO lexicon, you will find the following: “Twinks are all game characters that are not main characters. Players often use twinks to experience other aspects of the game than with their main character.”

There are also two other abbreviations, “Alt” and “Toon”, which also refer to (secondary) characters. But why do we often use these terms? “Char” as an abbreviation for character would be much more obvious. MeinMMO goes on a search and explains where “Twink”, “Alt” and “Toon” come from.

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Where does the term “old” come from?

Let us first deal with the term whose origin is certainly the most obvious: The term “Alt” comes from “alternative character” and accordingly describes an… you guessed it… alternative to the main character.

Where does the term “twink” come from?

The term “twink” is much more difficult to grasp than “old”. Long before the first 3D MMORPGs, the term “twink” was used in the American gay scene to describe young or young-looking, submissive, almost feminine men (via Wikipedia). This stereotype still exists today and is said to have expanded over time, for example to include adult women from the porn scene who look like teenagers.

Many German players who first came into contact with the term “twink” in EverQuest, World of Warcraft and the like probably had no idea of ​​its original meaning. For them, these were only second or third characters. However, the term had already appeared in the role-playing context before, for example in tabletop games or in multi-user dungeons (MUDs for short).

The term twink already appeared in multi-user dungeons.

If you listen to RPG fans from back then talk about the use of the term “twink”, you will learn the following:

  • Back in the 70s and 80s, the best gear from MUDs was called “Twinkling” (via Reddit) and the term “Twink” was used in the context of power leveling (via Wikipedia).
  • In the context of Dungeons & Dragons, “twinks” were apparently mostly young, male players who wanted to create overpowered characters and did not care about the actual role-playing aspects of the D&D adventure (via mmo-champion.com).
  • In Anarchy Online and various other MMORPGs, “twink” (or more generally, “twinking”) was a word used to describe any veteran character who wore gear normally worn by higher-level characters (via mmo-champion.com).
  • In Vanilla WoW, characters from PvP groups who had equipment that was actually intended for higher character levels were sometimes called “twinks”. Equipment that was acquired with the help of a stronger main character or friend (via Reddit). Later, this even developed into a classy twink scene for low-level PvP characters of levels 19, 29, and so on.

    • In some ways, there is a parallel here to the use of the term “twink” described at the beginning: a young, inexperienced character can be equipped by an older, more experienced and better-off character. Whether this actually explains the general use of the term “twink” in games is a topic of much discussion online.

    Another theory is that the term is derived from the English word “twinkling” because the tabletop, MUD and MMO players described above were primarily interested in the “glittering” or “sparkling” loot in order to equip their characters in the best possible way.

    In Souls games, there is also the term “Twink”, which is said to have originated from the targeted farming of the upgrade material “Twinkling Titanite” in Dark Souls. There, the term is also used to describe secondary characters who are equipped as best as possible in order to hunt down other low-level but significantly worse equipped characters.

    Where does the term “toon” come from?

    The term “toon” originally comes from “cartoon” and in this context refers to the characters in an animated film that are often portrayed as humanized animals or objects, probably strongly influenced by the well-known Looney Tunes from Warner Bros. – later continued by the Tiny Toon Adventures.

    In the role-playing context, this term probably first appeared in 1984, when a certain Warren Spector (Deus Ex, System Shock) developed the cartoon RPG Toon together with Greg Costikyan (via Wikipedia), in which one actually had to deal with cartoon characters.

    The term “toon” can also be found in modern games such as Splatoon.

    The first mention of toons as non-cartoon characters is said to have occurred in the context of The Realm Online in 1996. This is one of the first graphic MMORPGs, which also relies on a colorful, almost cartoonish graphic style.

    The colorful look may have reminded some people of the toons mentioned above, which may have given rise to the name for the characters of The Realm Online. From there, the term is said to have spread to other games such as Diablo or Anarchy Online.

    In 2003, Disney even released Toontown Online, an MMORPG in which the player characters were officially called “toons” (via Wikipedia), which may have accelerated the spread of the term as a synonym for characters.

    Which of the three terms “Twink”, “Alt” and “Toon” do you use regularly and when or in which game did you first come into contact with them? Tell us in the comments! Want more trivia knowledge? Then we have another exciting question for you: Why is the loot always white, green, blue, purple and gold?

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