Always stay same sex. Never understood how others do it regularly, at least not on characters youll be socializing with and even playing for years. Then again I tend to make characters (especially mains) look as close as possible to me, or at least what Id want to look like, given the available options, if I was a badass Elf Paladin on holy steroids.
Only time I ever gender-swapped was for Age of Conan and that was because the male animations with bows were distractingly terrible. Even so, took some getting used to.
........ also boobs.
Otherwise ill make a female distant alt. ... usually either a stealth class or healer.
I usually play females if its' a caster or healer and males for melees. I know it's an extrem stereo type. But I like it that way. And cause I usually play healer classes, most of them are girls. Also I can stuck for ages in the character editor with female characters. It's just fun. There are always people who are supprised, if they hear a male voice in the voice chat. But hey, it's just a game! :-D
My Ranger in EverQuest was a Wood Elf female because the buddy who got me hooked on the game told me people would be nicer and give me free stuff. He was right, but it didn’t take long before I wished the character was male. By that point, though, I felt like I was too invested to start over. I started playing males with WoW and now I’ll really only make females for bank mules or trader characters.
I played a female once (I am a male) and won't do it again. Back when EQ launched I was out of town for work and missed the first couple of weeks of launch so when I came back I had to play catch-up with friends who were playing. I started a wood elf in Kelethin because you could do everything without zoning (food, water, kill, bank, trainers, merchants) and back when EQ launched and 1200 baud modems were the cats meow as opposed to 800 baud modems, zoning was still prone to crashing. However, there were so many people crammed in Kelethin we all looked the same.
A friend playing a dwarf cleric said he'd keep me alive and to just go slay stuff. Back then things were significantly different when playing (chat required typing the full name, there were no floating names above the characters, you had to mouse select the toon to target it). So when I kept dieing and out of frustration blasted my friend who couldn't keep me alive he said, "you all look the same that I can't tell which one is you." So I said, "Screw it," and rolled a female since there were no females running around). It was no big deal since I play in first person so can't see my toon anyway. Also games like Tomb Raider and Resident Evil were pretty big back then so it wasn't like female characters weren't already a big part of gaming.
However, once I was well into the game and had invested a lot of playtime (and as a casual a lot of play time means a lot of real life time has passed) I had regretted my decision. Since I was doing some roleplaying and had a reputation I was invested in the character and the time played and the reputation and the friends/strangers met in game over the course of the many monts I had been playing my rogue. And as far as roleplaying it really wasn't all that much of a "roleplay" There is an X-Men character named "Rogue" who talks with a southern accent and calls people "darling." I would just read an X-Men comic book and talk like Rogue with my Rogue (that's about as far as the roleplaying aspect went and I thought it was really really obvious) So my "rogue" had a bit of a southern accent who called people "darling." Which, apparently, was a huge contributing factor to people thinking "wow, she really likes me."
Well, people would see a female toon running past and think "oh there is a girl playing." It got to be so frickin annoying. The flirting and creepiness that tells would entail (as if I looked like a female wood elf in real life). I had a long list of ignores. Even people who knew who my friends were in real life would get tells from people inquiring about me in real life. And friends being friends would sometimes encourage the behaviour and laugh themselves silly. We'd be out for drinks and talking about the game and I would go into a tirade about some of the things people would say and then I'd find out they were actually encouraging that behaviour - so I'd make them buy me the drinks. I could sometimes let loose with a tirade and some colorful language and euphemisms that they would absolutely find entertaining when we were playing and in chat.
I refused any free gift that was handed my way which just made people more convinced I was a girl in real life. I didn't want to accept anything because I wanted to earn it myself - it was part of the game and I can't understand why people don't want to play the game and earn things for themselves. I would always chat in full sentences because that is who I am. I don't shortcut speak. I type everything out (it's how I was educated and it is who I am). That also convinced people I was a girl in real life. One fellow told me he could tell I was a female in real life because I always typed in full sentences. I had people flirt and tell me we had a lot in common. I would simply respond with things along the lines of "probably more than you think." Also, it seemed the less you wanted to enter into a private conversation the more they were convinced I was a female in real life. The less I shared about my real life the more people became convinced I was a girl in real life. I really started having a low opinion of other gamers, by-the-way.
Like I said, having invested so much into a character I really didn't want to have to re-roll and start again since as a casual player that would be a really really long time of playing after starting over. But when leaving EQ (shortly after Velious was released) I spilled the beans to a few people as did my friends. There was one guy who I thought would actually commit suicide when he found out I was a guy in real life. One guy messaged me, "How come you never told me you were a guy in real life." I responded, "I never told you I was a girl in real life." Back then hardly any girls played computer games. My instinct is that everyone I see playing a game is a guy in real life. Unless I know that person in real life as a girl I assume everyone is a guy.
But after leaving EQ I vowed to never roll a female again and I haven't.
Some races look better as male, some look better as female. I play both.
Sometimes class armor also plays a role in which one. I have seen some female armors that look way better than the male armor.
Main will likely be male since I am male. but I will for sure have female characters as well. I'm not confused or insecure.
If you hit on people in games based on the sex of the pixels, you have more issues than gender identification. I am not seduced by pixels.
I often have characters of both sexes. The short reason is "roleplay" but I feel the need to explain it better than that.
When I make a character, I build a personality in my head for them based on race/class - you might say an image of who that character would be if I weren't controlling them. So, depending on that personality, sometimes it makes more "sense" for the character to be female rather than male (the player is male, by the way).
I don't do this because I'm a hardcore roleplayer by any means (it's not like I respond to everything in game in-character, or anything like that), but building the fiction around my character and who they are allows me to get into the character more than I would otherwise. I'm telling that character's story in my adventures through the game. In some cases in the past I've even written short stories about my characters based on their adventures.
As a side note, that's also why I prefer the word "character" instead of "toon" :)
Venjenz said:muscoby said:My instinct is that everyone I see playing a game is a guy in real life. Unless I know that person in real life as a girl I assume everyone is a guy.
MMORPG = Many Men Online Role Playing Girls.
Welcome to the Internet..... Where the men are men.... And so are the women. heheheheh
I usually roll males, since I like to identify more closely with my avatars. I'm a little too fuzzy IRL to identify with most female races (though not all). I'm also often disappointed in beard choices. "You call THAT a full beard? I'll show you a full beard!" I've rolled a few females if I had a great name or just felt like a change of pace, usually alts.
My buddy/neighbor plays females, is a proud "G.I.R.L.: Guy in real life," and will shout that from the rooftops given half a chance.
So many interesting answers and reasons in this thread!
Let's see... All of my main characters have been female. The only time I've ever played the opposite sex was to fill a bit role here and there. For me personally, I find it much easier to slip into a character of the same gender if I am going to be playing said character for any length of time.
I have played a female in the past but generally run a male. People seemed to be much more willing to help the female characters.
I've eventually quit or not even given games a chance if they don't allow you to choose your gender for a specific class because I immediately break immersion when trying to interact with other players... BDO for example was an amazing game, but I couldn't stand that my favorite class genre (evil knight) could only be played as a female. I cannot roleplay as a female because I don't fantasize about being a female. I'm not saying that people that play other genders fantasize about being that gender, but I get into my roleplaying by fantasizing/pretending that I am that avatar.
Again, that's just my personal take.
I have two-boxed a married couple before but two-boxing means that I don't have to interact with others, and not interacting with others means no roleplaying, which means no immersion, which means the game is short lived for me.
The first character I create is my gender. Any other character, who could turn out to be my main and only, could be female. When playing any MMO my default mode is everyone else is a guy behind their character. Then again it depends upon the class + race combination. I might be inspired to create a dark elven cleric ala Salvatore's "War of the Spider Queen" for instance.
dorotea said:All of my characters are the opposite gender. Being straight, I prefer to look at the other gender, and I guess I'm not so insecure that I feel playing the opposite gender challenges my sense of who I am.
I'm kind of the same way especially if I'm with a group of friends. The way I see it is if I have to look at the rear half of a character all the time might as well make it female. But for some strange reason when it comes to MMO's though I always feel compelled to make my character male. I feel like some hormone driven 15 year old kid is going to try and flirt with me.
I enjoy playing both. I think certain race/class combos look better in the gear. I think Draenai and BE female models in WoW hands down looked way better than the male models. Just depends on what looks cool to me. A lot of times I get really bored of playing a male character. I think maybe when I roll a female character I put a lot more effort into giving her some personality than I do a male. But getting unsolicited tells from strangers is real. It's never been rampant, but it does happen.
I'm a girl!
I always play female, and if the female race is ugly (dwarf) well I don't play that race.
I rolled a male dwarf once and once only (because I wanted to get some racials and see how the dwarves felt - I literally never played it after the first few levels. Thought of making it a bank alt, but just deleted it instead.
