Ancient slang for collectable items. The glowing question marks and exclamation points are major distractions for people like me. I've lost track of the number of times I have died while attempting to sneak close to high level monsters, just to collect that mysterious, glowing beauty.
It really sounds like they had some issue with shiny farming and they chose the wrong solution to the problem. This current 'fix' is hokey and unpredictable without knowing the 'level' of a zone.
