What is "ganking"?

Ganking is when a big group of players team up on one lone player, usually by surprise. Level differential is not necessary to be called ganking. In many games (mostly MMOs), this is a form of griefing, but in other games it is a legitimate and encouraged strategy.

For example, in DotA, ganking is an integral part to team victory. One player may roam around the map helping to ambush and team up on enemies who get caught out of position.

Ganking is when a group of player join together to take on a single player. The term probably formed from the words "gang" and "yanking" (the sudden application of large force).

While this strategy can be employed for griefing it is also often applied for "honorable" gameplay.

By combining forces the gang is able to:

• Take down more advanced players than they could beat individually
• Take down an equally advanced player more quickly (i.e. before reinforcements arrive or the target is able to flee)
• Reduce the danger of loosing any individual team member in what would otherwise be a more evenly matched encounter.

There's a lot of bad definitions for gank out there (and in here).

Gank, according to wiktionary is:

To kill, ambush, or defeat with little effort; used in online games.

In other words, to attack in a way in which the defender has no chance and rapidly loses, to pick an unfair fight.

And their examples are great:

Our group totally ganked this guy.

If ganking required a group, then why mention the group? One person may gank another.

I hate it when corpse-campers gank me over and over again.

If ganking was repeated killing, why mention that? You may be ganked once or many times.

If ganking was camping a corpse, why mention it? Ganking may or may not involve corpses.

In WoW, ganking is usually one high level character killing one lower level character. This usually occurs in 0-3 seconds - any longer and there is the possibility of escape for the victim. You also see ganking in lower level battlegrounds, where a twinked character can gank a non-twinked character in one or two global cooldowns.

In Eve Online, you have gank squads (they go around killing smaller squads), and you have suicide gankers (they kill you, and then die quickly to the npc system security - but then their alt/buddy comes by and loots you).

Going back over 10 years, it has always just meant one or more players ambushing and defeating another player. "You got ganked!" Kind of like, "you got knocked the ** out!".. Really no special strategy or classification involved.

In EVE: Online, ganking does not necessarily mean the attackers have superior numbers, just that they have an obvious advantage. The most common example is suicide ganking, where one or more players attacks one player, usually a freighter or industrial, in high sec with expectation of being killed by CONCORD shortly afterward. Being in high sec space the victim is unprepared for battle as they are relying on CONCORD to dissuade any would-be attackers.