What does proc mean?

Noob question.

I've come across this word many times in the game and i have no idea what it means :/

proc is like a special attack of your weapon. like the oracle gun has a push proc which pushes enemies back.

Ooooh...so it is a custom word?

I thought it was short for "procure" or something.

Still, strange choice of word. Since the game has used the English vocabulary pretty well so far.

It's a commonly used therm in MMO's.

Here's some interesting info I googled...

"Proc" is a computer gamer term. It rhymes with "dock". "Proc" is both a noun and a verb.*

"Proc" and "proccing" is used to describe whenever a random gaming item activates, or a random gaming event occurs.

Particularly common for massive multiplayer online games, procs are random events where special armor or weapons provide the user with temporary extra powers, or whenever the opposing monster suddenly becomes more powerful in some way.*

e.g. "Whenever my trinket procs, I get extra dodge for 20 seconds"
e.g. "My rifle speed-up never procs enough for my tastes."e.g. "My ring usually procs once every two minutes"
e.g. "Don't let his lightning charge proc, or else we are all dead"


Here are some examples of gaming procs:*

a special spellcast suddenly becomes available to the player.
a sudden armor bonus will activate and last for 10 seconds.
the player will temporarily receive more health points, allowing her to fight a monster longer.
the monster will suddenly gaing extra strength to crush the players in front of him.


The Origin of the Term "Proc":*

The programmatic term "proc" has been influenced by many sources. No single source has been definitively credited with the term "proc", but here are the candidates:
1) Programmed Random OCcurrence.*This is a favorite explanation of "proc" amongst programmers. This alleged origin describes the randomness of a proc, and how it is not a guaranteed event.*
2) PROCess.*Most laypeople believe this to be the source of the expression "proc", but software programmers prefer the explanation above.*
3) PROCedure.*Coming from the world of Pascal programming, there were text-based games where gamer commands would be typed like "proc meleestrike wraith"*
4) special PROCedure.*This is variant of the #3 explanation above.*

Excellent. Thought this was indigenous to ALegends at first, so it never occurred to search for it outside this forum.

Thanks

Weapon proc(ess). First time I saw it used was in Everquest, back in 1999. From my understanding it was short for a weapon effect process based on a RNG (random number generator) system.

Example, each weapon strike is a number, the range is the frequency. a slow weapon would have a smaller range, so if the range is 20, each hit is a roll with a chance to to hit "the magic number" and process the weapon effect. a fast weapon would have a larger range, 50, 100 etc. All this takes place behind the scenes...you just attack and go boom ever so often.

Man raiding in that game was amazingly hard and fun! To this day getting my class epic 2.0 was the greatest feeling in an MMO...(beating Arthas in WoW on 25 man was close too)