I wrote some time ago about playing your opposite gender in-game and wanted to re-visit the topic now that I have rolled my first female toon in over 15 alts. Read this oldie in Cross-dressing WoWers, and get caught up with what I’ve said in the past.
I’ve been reading more and more about women playing WoW, and they have been commenting on their experiences playing a female character. One thing that they may not realize is what is different treatment from male treatment, as they are women in RL. As a guy playing a female toon, I will quickly notice anything out of norm for my normal playing from hundreds of hours of playing male toons.
We all bring in a set of beliefs, behaviors, and possibly stereotypes into the game as we play it. How we play the game affects other people if we interact in any way. Do you help people who obviously aggroed too many mobs? Would you go on an instance run of all women if you are a male? Do you answer requests for extra mats after a good run with another player?
I intend to explore tons of nuances that come into play when gaming as a female avatar. We’ve all heard the reason for doing that as “If I have to look at a butt for hundreds of hours…” but I had noticed something interesting with the recent Tier 4 videos: they have concentrated on female toons. Is it possible that the developers made the female versions better looking, so when given the option of showing the armor on a male or female, it was an easy decision? I noticed back in the day when we were waiting for MC to start, we started linking up armor sets in guild chat and having a male and female toon stand next to each other and try them all on. Why a plate chestpiece for a female could ever be a bikini top and offer any combat protection is beyond me, but it would really affect a 14 year-old guy’s demeanor while playing with her.
What are your thoughtsย and experiences on the gender topic?
I think you’re reading too much into it.
In fantasy stories, males look BADASS and females look SEXY. Thus males have huge, bulky, intimidating looking armor and females have skimpy “armor”.
I’ve played more female toons than male ones in my time (quick count, I think the ratio is something like 5:4) and people don’t seem to treat me any differently… outside of the VERY rare “r u a girl??” whisper, which I usually respond to with something like “I dunno, are you really an elf?”
Point of irony: it’s usually REALLY easy to spot a boy-trying-too-hard-to-be-a-girl in an MMO. Generally this is an attention grab. Whatever. I don’t do that myself, but nor do I separate myself from my characters while I’m playing them. As a result there have been a few times where someone I knew in-game for a long time has had a somewhat embarrassing “aha!” moment.
I can understand why someone would want to play characters of all one gender or another, but to me it’s more about character concept than anything.
THIS IS THE LONGEST REPLY EVER. Do I get a trophy?
Hm, it will be interesting to see how you get treated playing a girl. Just dont try to act all girly =P or (desperate) guys will start flirting with you..eww
Hmmm that might be the longest repy you have made Crystalis, but I’m sure other have made longer ones here.
Neat little experiment there Gitr. Luck be with you. Be sure to dance nekkid a few times at the stormwind fountain for tips. Never really worked for my gnome but hey…no wait scratch that. Don’t dance nekkid at stormwind…the guards will level you. I do think female avatars are treated differently regardless of true gender of the player. I know my wife had a few little boys follow her around like she was the greatest thing. She treated them like crap, had them gather mats for her skill ups and if she needed help would “order” them to drop what they were doing and come help. Most times they did or faced not getting spoke to for a few days. Favors were always for her, she loved every minute of it. After she got what sh wanted she threw them away. kinda heartless but they still call on her from time to time.
She called them her Puppies. She is a little on the pent up side sometimes. Cant order me around so she dominates online fodder.
See this was a long reply too.
Hey, thanks for all the comments and thoughts. Yes, Crys, you shall get a little trophy logo on your post tomorrow morning. ๐
I will digest this info, play Bloodr for a while, and write some in the morning.
Heavy post to read so early in the morning, but here goes.
I usually roll a female character. Mainly because of the pretty looks ingame and the staring at butt thing for hundred of hours.
And for the fact that most people/characters you see are male. So that makes you feel a little different.
My first female char was a priest, and I chose that simply because of the robes thing. No way I’m going to run around in robes as a male all day long I said :p
And it played out just fine. So now I almost always roll a female char.
I do notice when playing a female toon, people treat you different. In PUG instancing, they cut you more slack if needed with drops or errors (mostly). People will help you out quicker with quests.
Like Mindkiller, I have lots of similar experiences playing a female toon. I was questing the other day in Ashenvale, and doing a red quest, very hard. I happen to come across a male player (kid, must have been 15-16 or so) and he just ran up to me and asked if I needed help. I mostly do RP with strangers so I pleaded for his mighty blade to help me :p.
He ended up helping me all evening. Every time we finished a quest I’d do a /kiss /hug /giggle on him and he’d be all frantic about it …
Even my brother and buddy that rerolled chars with me on a new server changed to female chars. We now are a group of fury amazons ramping through eastern kingdoms :p
My chars name is Lara, my brother’s Croft … we get so many laughs about that one ๐
Point is, female characters rule the internet.
Excaliber had to give me a couple of look-overs last night when Kelthias was helping me quest. ๐ I’m about to ding 8 with just about 90 minutes of playing. Sorry about the no trophy logo. I ended up staying home to clean up before vacation.
I have always played girls, because, well, I am one. I always wanted to be Red Sonja growing up and this is my chance. Sure we have skimpy outfits, but that is part of the lure, and it allows us to be something we aren’t in RL. As Crystalis said it is extremely easy to find the men/boys in girl toons, especially if they are younger (just like you can pick the 13 year old in the crowd in about 12 seconds).
I may play a male in the future, but then I would have to go all out and create some smarmy pally or something…
I tend to have a little clique going with my characters….
My alliance characters centre around my Main, Liber – male warlock. With all my alts being female. I plan to do this to when I roll my first horde character, Troll Mage.
I like my main to retain my own traits from RL, i can then have a certain ‘freedom’ with my alts as they are female.
I have really enjoyed playing hunter again, and so far being female hasn’t entered into anything, except one instance.
I was clearing out an area to go up into the tower to kill the Troll Cheiftan as a Pally charged on up the tower and was killing him as I got there. I said, “thanks for offering to let me in on the kill.” He said he was sorry and didn’t see me there (not possible as he ran right through one of my fights) and buffed me with Might and bowed.
/grin Being a hot chick may come in handy later.