I think the only correct answer is a pronunciation doesnt exist.*
*That said I’ve always pronunced it as “owned” though hearing it pronunced “poned” is also quite common.
In loan words from (I believe) Gaelic, the letter ‘w’ can be a vowel sound pronounced ‘oo’. Since ‘pwn’ seems to want to have the ‘w’ be a vowel to be pronounceable as spelled, ‘poon’, is how it would be pronounced in modern English.
/fanwank
I swear to God, I ADORE SDMB!!! I get to read and participate in exchanges with people who are, you know, literate! 
As I was reading the first few comments in this thread, I was thinking exactly what Dio mentioned here.
No cites, but my take from the last fifteen years is the following:
Pwn (pronounced pown) is merely one of many deliberate typos that frequent online interaction. Like ‘lol’, ‘teh’, ‘meh’ and such words, they are rarely taken out of context. It’s merely a way of adding idiomatic content to a sentence. A meme like ‘kthxbye’ is always communicated tongue-in-cheek, with all parties aware of the original joke. This is in now way a form of 1337-speak.
1337-speak, (which I have never seen referred to as elite, eleete or anything like that, because deriving the root of the term mostly defeats it’s purpose), AFAIK originated as a form of obfuscation in the old BBS-days, in order to get around censors and filters. Typical examples if this would be the words ‘pr0n’ or ‘warez’. Not being a form of secret communication for a malevolent cabal of underground blackhats (real nerds encrypt), I’ve never seen it treated as anything else than an in-joke.
I’ve heard it pronounced “Owned”, “Poned” and “Pawned” by numerous “hardcore” gamers who have been around long enough to pre-date the term’s appearance
Personally, I usually read it as “Pawned” but say it aloud as “Owned”, if that makes sense.
It depends on which online community you’ve been a part of. Since this is a word that has evolved quite naturally on the internet, and there’s been no specific group championing it, people are generally free to pronounce it however they want, so long as they are understood by who they are communicating with.
I often hear it pronounced more like ‘pawned’ rather than poe-nd (not sure how else to write that pronunciation, but it’s the one that rhymes with owned).
I think The Great Philosopher is right that it is leetspeak. But then, there’s probably no universally accepted definition of that anyway. He is only wrong about the etymology, which indeed was a typo that got incorporated into common internet slang, like teh.
I always mentally pronounce it as “pwooned”, to rhyme with “swooned”, except with a slightly shorter “oo” sound.
I don’t think I’ve ever had to pronounce it out loud, thankfully. I will continue to think “pwoon” though.
The proper way to pronounce it is not to use it at all.
“Ha ha ha… you got totally not to use it at alld”
I pronounce it p’own’d, with the accent on the P as its own separate syllable. Not like poned, which is one syllable.
I like random midword apostrophes, though. I attribute this to reading too much Chris Claremont in my formative years.
It may be the “classic” pronunciation but is it so unthinkable that culture-obsessed youth would start to deliberately mispronounce it as “poned” when spoken aloud to draw attention to their awareness of the written meme? Yes, that would be the deliberately ironic pronunciation but in my (admittedly anecdotal) experience it’s by far the more common one. Not that irony is remotely common in today’s culture outside this one particular instance…
I don’t know if it’s leetspeak (1337sp34k in the original “spellling”) but I always thought it was. but I agree it’s used self-referentially and is definitely a running gag among “insiders.”
Agree strongly. It’s usually pronounced “poned” nowadays because so many gamers have gone to using voicechat in games instead of typing – and in chat, no one can see your orthography. SAYING it with the p sound “poned” lets listeners know you are being ironic-cool or just silly.
One of the things I appreciate my parents for is hogging the Nintendo when I was young so that I never really attained any sort of meaningful bloodthirst for the realm of video games to begin with… so that probably doesn’t make me the most qualified to opine on this subject.
That said, it really doesn’t seem that different from any other type of deliberately manufactured slang. For instance, go back and listen to a rap album from the early 90s and count all the outmoded terms and phrases used at the time. “Gank move”? Someone got “gaffled”? Oh, that hoe is “skanless”, is she? All of that shit is strictly a cultural identifier, a way to suss out who is in the know, and as soon as your cousin in Iowa figures it out that means it’s played out and time to invent new terminology to replace it. Pronouncing it “owned” rather than “poned” pretty much circumvents any potential cool points since the use of the verb “own” in this case has been well established for years. You gotta have that “p” on there otherwise there’s no real trend being referenced.
I’m Audi 5000.
I say “pwun” and “pwunned”. I guess I always read the pw as an initial cluster rather then the wn as a final one.
Or it lets your listeners know that you mean “pwned”, not “owned”. Like it or not, they’re two different words. Yes, they’re related, but there are plenty of cases in language of words that are related but distinct.
Yep, and I can tell you (as a gamer who goes waaaaaay back before this term) that it’s two entirely different things to get owned and to get pwnd. Getting owned is like a welterwight getting in the ring with 1990 Mike Tyson. Getting pwnd (or pwnt) is like you or me getting in the ring with 1990 Mike Tyson, only we’re blindfolded and Tyson has a gun.
It really isn’t. The word ownage was in common usage in gaming long before the alternate spelling popped up, and it meant exactly the same as it means now. The only difference is that pwn is limited exclusively to that context.
“Meh” originated as a typo?
I think the point he’s making is that it’s one of those words that’s rarely taken out of context- if you just typed it (any of those words) on its own, it doesn’t mean anything and indeed looks like a typo, but when you put it in context it suddenly gains meaning.
…and that, since the rise of “pwn”, the usage of “own” for that meaning has decreased.