Simply put, a noob is a novice at a particular game. The word was twisted from the term "newb", a shortened form of the word "newbie". Usually has a negative connotation. Often spelled "n00b", or even further degenerated to "nub" by the particularly lazy. Of course, everyone was new to the game once, but the implication of this term is that there are specific faults displayed by new players that make the noob a Player Archetype.
Noobs tend to be disliked by more experienced gamers because (from the veterans' point of view) they ask extremely simple or obvious questions, lack proper etiquette or, in team games, drag down the performance of the rest of the team. In the most extreme forms, they become God Modders. They also never admit to being wrong or belligerent, and will often accuse more experienced players that they're the stupid ones, often with Insane Troll Logic, when they try to correct them.
Some people make a distinction between a noob and a newb, with a "newb" being a level-headed beginner who is polite, heeds advice, and honestly wishes to improve, while a "noob" is obnoxious, annoying, and overconfident. Or to put it another way, everyone starts as a newb — you're only a noob if you don't grow out of it. The difference is described in this comic.
A stereotypical "noob" will usually join a group with little regard for his (relative) lack of ability; many (but certainly not all) will enter a dungeon and immediately run right into danger, thinking either that he can hold his own (despite being vastly outnumbered and overwhelmed), or that the other players are right behind him and will pick up the slack (which they very likely won't and can't).
The newbie and noob also appear in other cooperative and competitive genres besides the MMORPG. In less-structured games, newbies may just get rolled over, insulted, and forgotten; noobs are the ones who have picked up on the least-inspired or lamest strategies and earn the ire of those who are playing more "skillfully" and getting beaten. In teamplay-oriented games, the team often helps the polite newbie along, as it may result in their team winning more often; the noob will probably be the guy crashing planes into individual enemies or charging into the enemy base carrying the flag, and so other players will probably just try to steal the helicopters before they can. In cooperative games, the teams tend to be small and everyone's contributions important: the newbie is exasperating to have on your side; the noob is usually booted from the server very quickly.
Of course, using the word seriously is an indication of being a noob. It gets thrown around all the time and has decayed enormously to the point of often being used completely uninformatively, like just calling someone "stupid" for no very good reason.
A really bad noob may sometimes spell the term as "nub". Amazingly, the term "nub" has a corresponding meaning in naval jargon, referring to a "newbie" (who doesn't stand watches and is considered "deadweight" to his naval department), with a literal meaning of "non-usable body".
Not to be confused with a certain Noob. See also Scrub. If you're looking for the French multimedia franchise (that started with a Web Original anglophone audiences are more likely to know about), this page is pretty much the only one using the "Noob" name that is not associated with it. Otherwise, here is a good place to start.
Examples:
- Lord En, of Beelzebub. A preteen demon who loves video games, he is nonetheless horrible at them. So he gets his demon maidservants to help him out by altering the game (from activating basic hacks and glitches with magic to enabling things not available in a game so he can win). Notably, these maids know he is really a Noob, but since whenever he cries the surrounding area is drowned in a sea of fire, they don't let him catch on.
- He gets one hell of a butt-kicking when Himekawa, infuriated by En's maids introducing an invisibility mode for their team into a game where such a thing does not exist, buys the entire game from the company so he and his associates can win.''
- Totalpro64, the main character of Geometry Dash Episodes, is introduced as a noob in its trailer. One of his defining traits is being ridiculously bad at Geometry Dash, to the point of taking one million attempts to complete its first level.
- The term appears in The Keys Stand Alone, though occasionally something else is used. Mattagandas refers to beginning adventurers as “newborns.”
- The four are essentially demigod-strength noobs. This is problematic for everyone, including themselves.
- Forum Warz, a game about Trolling message boards, gives the title of "Permanoob" to the excessively weak class.
- Any form of the Call of Duty online multiplayer will see this a lot; players will be called noobs for such things as using grenade launchers ("noobtubing") or random spray fire from the hip.
- In the MMORPG Runescape, the term "noob" is often used as a very derogatory term — akin to calling someone a "knob" — regularly thrown about with no prior provocation. Players were reported for this so much, the rules now clearly state that use of the term "noob" (or any variant thereof) ONLY means "newb/new player" and is not a reason to report players. Try telling that to veteran players when they're called a noob...
- The character Meg in the Player-Owned Ports is an in-universe new adventurer, though she behaves more like a "newb" than a "noob". Once a week, she'll ask you for advice on an adventure, take your advice to heart (whether it's good or bad), and give you a share of her loot after a successful adventure.
- Go to any online multi-player game and make a new character. Anyone who's even one level above you will refer to you as a n00b.
- If you do not follow the generally-accepted strategy in a MOBA game like League of Legends or Defense of the Ancients, you are likely to get called this in the first 30 seconds and pretty much continuously for the next 40 minutes. A highly-competitive team-based game where one weak link on your team can ruin your chance of victory will do that to otherwise normal players.
- The X-Universe boards look very poorly on using "noob" as a derogatory term. A) the moderators are fairly strict. B) everyone who's played any of the X games remembers vividly their own time as a noob, because it lasts so long. The net result is that any time someone comes on the board whining about how stuck he is (happens once or twice a week), you've usually got five or six veteran players who step in to help him get unstuck.
- The fourth generation of Pokémon, namely Diamond and Pearl, used internet-speak a lot, mostly as a Shout-Out to the Something Awful forums. Explicitly, in front of the Oreburg Pokémon Gym, the trainer there to help you does imply that people look down on trainers who don't know anything about the world of Pokémon as noobs.
- The Team Fortress 2 community has a term for this player, F2P or "Free to Play". A F2P is a new player that doesn't have a premium account which means they're either extremely new to this game or they don't want to bother to get into it, both of which implies they have no idea how the game worksan example. F2P also means any item a new player can easily get like "Ghostly Gibus", a worn-out old tophat. F2Ps are often held in contempt as they are seen at best endearingly incompetent and in need of help from more experienced players or Scrubs that should go back to Call of Duty/Battlefield. In general, F2P is thrown around as a catch-all term for a Noob and/or Scrub.
- Often, the term "noob" is used in Everybody Edits to describe particular patterns of players or player-made worlds.
- Free edit worlds are traditionally considered "nooby." Possible reasons for this are that high-quality levels almost always come from limited access worlds. Behaviors associated with these worlds, such as asking for edit permission, asking users not to ruin the world by trolling, or amateur Role-Playing are also often considered nooby.
- Common novel challenges such as hook jumps, hovers, dot trails, and randomly blocked off paths are often considered nooby. This goes especially for boxed minigame worlds, with often take repeat these types of mechanics without much variety or originality.
- Worlds intended to give the players magic coins (which are randomly found when collecting coins) by flooding the world with coins usually come across as nooby. This is because players familiar with the game's hidden magic mechanics will realize that magic coins are very rare to get in a world with lots of coins.
- The term is used so much by Roblox players that is had essentially lost its original meaning in that community (oftentimes, the term is used to insult who the user believes to be a Troll or just a straight-up Jerkass).
- Final Fantasy XIV has an baby plant icon by the names of new players to indicate that they are probably experiencing dungeons and raids for the first time, which has led to them being dubbed "sprouts". Sprouts fall into the "newb" rather than "noob" definition—experienced players finding themselves in a raid full of sprouts often take the time to explain fight mechanics before starting, and it's considered highly bad form to be rude to sprouts for making mistakes.
- A "Gamer's Glossary" segment of Ctrl+Alt+Del tackled the differences between a newb and a noob/n00b. Neither know what they're doing at first, but a newb will learn from mistakes while a noob will never admit to any wrongdoing.
- MMORPG webcomic The Noob is built around this, thought the titular character may be more of a newb after a few strips: most of the times he does something he shouldn't, it's because nobody bothered telling him. Though he sometimes relapses.
- In Something*Positive, Jason's toddler daughter picks this up very quickly when Daddy introduces her to World of Warcraft. Then she takes it into the playground.
- In Sluggy Freelance's World of Warcraft parody, "Years of Yarncraft", in-game culture considers being a newb tantamount to being a noob, and people who show evidence that they're unfamiliar with the game are treated with even less respect than those who show evidence of being raging douchebags. Don't associate with these people, or you're a newb too.
- Noob and the franchise that spawned from it are about a guild for newbs, in which most of the members are Noobs in one way or another.
- The Headmaster in Transformers: Animated uses a lot of gamerspeak and often refers to his enemies as n00bs when gloating.
- Stan's father from South Park is, somewhat predictably, this when he tries to join Stan in playing World of Warcraft. Somewhat oddly, he ends up becoming essential in saving the World of Warcraft from the Griefer who's killing everyone's characters off.
Blizzard Executive: We can't trust the Sword of A Thousand Truths to a noob!
