Buying Guide

MMO Buying Glossary

Every term used across our game pages, reviews and guides, explained in plain English. Bookmark this if any of our other content uses a word you don't recognize.

Regularly updated · 5 min read · Buying Guide

Trading & Marketplace Terms

RMT (Real-Money Trading)
Exchanging real money for in-game currency, items, accounts or services. Prohibited by most publishers' terms of service, regardless of vendor.
Escrow
A marketplace holding your payment until you confirm an order was delivered, rather than releasing funds to the seller immediately. See our safety guide for why this matters.
Marketplace vs. Direct Seller
A marketplace connects independent sellers to buyers; a direct seller fulfills every order themselves as one company. Full comparison in Direct Sellers vs. Marketplaces.
Chargeback
Reversing a payment through your bank or card issuer after a purchase goes wrong. Covered in Refunds & Disputes.
Account Reclaim
When a seller uses an account's original recovery email to take it back after selling it. See Buying Accounts vs. Buying Gold.

Currency & Economy Terms

Top-Up
Buying a game's premium currency at a discount through a third-party seller, delivered via the game's own official purchase system. See Best Gacha Top-Up Deals.
Player-Driven Market
An in-game economy where prices are set by real player supply and demand rather than fixed vendor rates. Covered in our sandbox economy guide.
Full-Loot PvP
A death penalty where a defeated player drops some or all of their carried items and currency for the killer. Relevant to EVE Online and Albion Online specifically.
Wipe
A full server reset of player progress, common in Rust and DayZ. See Best Sellers for Survival & Extraction Games.

Boosting Terms

Boosting
Paying a skilled player to complete difficult in-game content on your own account. Full breakdown in When Does Boosting Make Sense?
Per-Clear Pricing
Boosting priced per individual clear of rotating challenge content, common in gacha games like Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero.
Per-Service Pricing
Boosting priced per discrete task rather than a raid clear, common in survival and sandbox games like EVE Online and Escape from Tarkov.

Genre-Specific Terms

Gacha
A monetization system where premium currency is spent on randomized character or item pulls. See our Genshin Impact and related game pages.
Extraction Shooter
A genre where players enter a map to loot, then must successfully exit ("extract") to keep what they found, as seen in Escape from Tarkov.
Modded Server
A community-run game server with custom rules or economies, common in DayZ where no official currency exists.

See our full guides library for in-depth articles on any of these topics, or browse all 46 games directly.

MD
MMODude Editorial Team
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