Wooden PC

Submission 27,978

About

"Wooden PC" is an Internet slang term for personal computers with poor performance, lag issues and slow loading times. This expression is most commonly used to criticize another player’s machine for prolonging loading times or lag issues in the context of multiplayer online games, including League of Legends, Defense of the Ancients and Heroes of Newerth.

Origin

The earliest known use of the term “wooden pc” in the context of video gaming was posted in the Warrior Nation Forums^[5] by member WNxFatalEnigma on April 6th, 2008 in replying to the original poster's review of the game Dawn of War: Soul Storm, saying he would probably not be able to run the demo due to his poor performing “wooden pc.”

"I would try downloading the demo, but I have a wooden pc [it seems like it] which will probs[sic] lag a lot, but there's no denying the great preview."

Spread

On February 26th, 2009, commenter KoZ!oL replied to a post about a mod for the game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on the gaming blog Clan Base,^[7] remarking that it appeared to be a "mod for wooden-pc users." On September 19th, 2010, League of Legends Forums^[8] member VileEvil insulted the original poster of a thread for being a “wooden pc owner” who causes games to take 10 minutes to load. On June 30th, 2011, Urban Dictionary^[6] user kaygeecee submitted an entry for “wooden pc,” defining the phrase as a label for computers that suffer from slow loading times:

"A term often used in relation to loading screens in gaming. Describes a players load time as being very slow."

On December 12th, another thread complaining about delays in loading time caused by “wooden PC users" surfaced on the League of Legends^[2] message board. On July 16th, 2012, Gamesports Forums^[4] member Dace069 suggested that players should be given an option to boot “wooden pc” users for causing lags during gameplay. On December 23rd, Heroes of Newerth Forums^[3] member ahaja started a thread complaining about his computer’s performance when running the online game, referring to it as a “wooden PC.” On April 13th, 2013, a Facebook^[1] page titled “This Fucking Wooden PC makes me want to Quit Gaming” was launched.