What does Smurfing mean when applied to online games?
Best Answer
In the context of Starcraft (and it is different in other games), smurfing referred to utilizing an account with a lower ranking (usually ICCUP) than is accurate for you as a player, to beat up on lesser players.
Since Starcraft 2 has a built in ELO style system, this would mean buying a new account (or destroying your own ranking) and losing all your matches to be placed in a league below your skill level (or using one that is already in such a position).
Since ELO style ranking systems require a sample size of multiple games to make accurate prediction of the skill level, players can trick the system into believing they possess a lower skill level.
Smurfing is not unique to ELO style rankings either. Many tournaments are held for lower skilled players and by misrepresening themselves, highly skilled players can enter these tournaments. This often times constitutes fraud or cheating, but may be by design. For example, the Team Liquid Attack pits a professional player against a series of lesser players. Often times they will intentionally mix in another professional player and present him as a lesser player for comedic value. This is by design (and fun to watch).
Usually, however, smurfing is tantamount to taking candy from a baby.
Wall riding is when you take advantage of non-realistic physics in driving games and rub up against walls when cornering and passing.
As an extreme example, in some of the older Gran Turismo games you could do the endurance races on the high speed (nearly circular) track by using a very fast car and pinning it to the outside wall. You could literally use rubber bands on the controller to hold the car to the wall and let the game play itself.
More modern racing games have become more realistic, and this technique no longer works as well (or at all).
Ping is the amount of milliseconds it takes a packet of information to reach the server from you and back. Basically it's a measurement of connection speed, and it influences lag quite a lot.
[Ping] tells how long it
takes a "packet" of data to travel
from your computer to a server on the
Internet and back. Whenever you
experience delayed responses in
Internet applications - this would be
due to a higher than desired ping.
Similar to packet loss, lower is
better when it comes to ping. A result
below 100 ms should be expected from
any decent broadband connection.
Best Answer
In the context of Starcraft (and it is different in other games), smurfing referred to utilizing an account with a lower ranking (usually ICCUP) than is accurate for you as a player, to beat up on lesser players.
Since Starcraft 2 has a built in ELO style system, this would mean buying a new account (or destroying your own ranking) and losing all your matches to be placed in a league below your skill level (or using one that is already in such a position).
Since ELO style ranking systems require a sample size of multiple games to make accurate prediction of the skill level, players can trick the system into believing they possess a lower skill level.
Smurfing is not unique to ELO style rankings either. Many tournaments are held for lower skilled players and by misrepresening themselves, highly skilled players can enter these tournaments. This often times constitutes fraud or cheating, but may be by design. For example, the Team Liquid Attack pits a professional player against a series of lesser players. Often times they will intentionally mix in another professional player and present him as a lesser player for comedic value. This is by design (and fun to watch).
Usually, however, smurfing is tantamount to taking candy from a baby.