Kiting (MMORPG term)

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Kiting is a term encountered in the MMORPG Games such as EverQuest, World of Warcraft or Guild Wars, referring to a popular method of killing mobs (monsters) by staying at a distance, using ranged attacks, and running whenever the enemy comes near. Similar tactics may be used in other computer and video games.

It has been suggested that the term "kiting" refers to the slang banking term, meaning to illegally float money back and forth between accounts, similarly to what is done between two or more players and a mob without the mob ever reaching a player. Generally, the banking term refers to money not reaching its destination. If this is the case, the commonly-used explanation of kiting as "Killing In Transit" would be a backronym. However, many now associate the name of the tactic with the activity of flying a kite. The analogy is that by being able to run faster than an aggressive target, the player will cause it to pursue him or her, much as a kite follows a fast-running person. The advantage of the strategy is that a safe distance is kept between the player and the target while the player keeps bombarding the target with spells (or sometimes arrows or other projectiles). This ideally results in a dead monster without the player taking a hit. The obvious disadvantages of this tactic are the annoyances of constant running around, its slowness, and the possibility of 'adds' (other monsters in the area assisting the primary target). The tactic relies on being able to generate more damage per second than the mob's hit point regeneration without running out of mana, and so is limited in this respect.

Kiting was an extraordinarily effective tactic in the first several months after EverQuest was released, allowing players to kill monsters that 'conned' red (on a scale of green-blue-white-yellow-red, signifying the level of the monster relative to the player's level, white being equal, green much lower and red much higher). In the summer of 1999, Verant Interactive implemented several nerfs apparently designed to make kiting a less viable tactic. The most notable change made damage-over-time (DoT) spells only 66% as powerful while the target chased the player. DoT spells, among many others, have since been revised several times (now do full damage to running mobs), and attempts have been made to promote grouping. Kiting continues, however.

EverQuest II implemented a locked-encounter system that countered several tactics that had emerged in the original game. When a player enters a locked encounter, they lose any movement speed enhancements they have (except for a special sprint ability). Movement speed enhancements were useful in kiting to maintain a safe distance between the player and the target.

Kiting is also a term used in the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft, where the player kiting is usually a ranged class like a hunter or mage and involves "pulling" a boss from the main group of enemies while the rest of the group defeats them. The hunter/mage usually gets the aggro off them after the other enemies are defeated and then the whole groups fights the boss together with no other distractions.

Sometimes players will kite high level mobs into an enemy capital city to wreak havoc. For example, one party of orc hunters kited a super-high level mob, called Kazzak, into Stormwind. This particular monster becomes practically invincible after 3 minutes of combat. Blizzard had to reset the server so that normal gameplay could continue. Those responsible were banned, and Blizzard reset the game settings so that Kazzak could not be kited that far.