Is is just me, or have the articles on this site started to really suck lately? When you write such a stupid article, you should expect a bunch of stupid replies.
I forgot to throw my cred on the articale to show that it can be a little valid, but dont take things word for word. I know girls that are real huslers in MMO's and Real girls. They will rob you of their stuff even if you don't even know.
I'm a female gamer and I've been playing MMOs for a long time. I was amused by the article. Good read. The thing that bothers me is that more and more people take the games waaaaayyyyy too seriously. I still won't forget about that guy in China who killed another gamer over a sword. I understand there is some amount of seriousness and pride when it comes to ones hobbies, but there is a point when you just need to let it go. I've roleplayed characters in MMOs where my purpose was to get items/coin from others and to take advantage of them. I was a rogue, a knave, a bard intent on pickpocketing or spinning a tale to attain goods. Did it work? Sometimes and sometimes not. Another time I was a fierce female warrior bent on attaining strength and items for myself and helping to protect and supply others. Does the sex of the character really matter?
Get this; I played a male rogue and decided to hit on female AVs for fun. Apparently I'm really good at it because two of them actually gave me really nice items after I told them stories of my woes. I played a male enchanter in EQ and I was getting women wanting to send me RL photos of themselves and their numbers. <----- THAT is where I draw the line. When I'm playing a game I like to KEEP it a game. Once you start throwing around RL information it can get ugly fast and also kills my imagination. In the past when I didn't mean to give out personal information I trashed my character and made a new one. I play female and male toons and it depends on what I feel like roleplaying at the time of creation.
Will this article help others? Maybe if they are new gamers and didn't know that people were doing this, otherwise it just fuels a debate or makes you laugh. Many have known about it for years and still continue to be had. In RL this occurs when you trust and believe in others. I had a friend in EQ who fell in love with another player. He got married to her in the game and spent a very long time acquiring armor, weapons and other items for her just to find out she was a man. That female AV disappeared never to be seen again. My friend was really heartbroken. So, what did he do? Heh, he did it again. (Warning: For politically correct lovers I'm about to make a gender stereotype) In closing, MEN are dense.
Funny. I read the OP but started ignoring the posts when they started flaming.
I thought I'd just mention a funny thing that occurred to me as I read this post. I play MMOs with my girlfriend. We've used teamspeak and vent in different MMOs over the years. When other people realize she's a r/l female, they always behave better.
There's usually a big difference when there's a female online compared to when it's "just the boys." People aren't nearly as rude or crass or offensive when she's online. Also, guilds are much quicker to invite me (us) to raids when she is online.
I could get into the reasons for it, but that would just be flame-bait and I'm not interested in keeping track of all that.
Thanks for the OP, it's a fun read. - Phos
AAH! A troll fire! Quick, pour some Kool-Aid on it!!!
i just wanted to say this but u do get xp in swg for danceing its its own profferson
Hold on Snow Leopard, imma let you finish, but Windows had one of the best operating systems of all time.
If the Powerball lottery was like Lotro, nobody would win for 2 years, and then everyone in Nebraska would win on the same day. And then Nebraska would get nerfed.-pinkwood lotro fourms
AMD 4800 2.4ghz-3GB RAM 533mhz-EVGA 9500GT 512mb-320gb HD
I neglected to mention that, as a female gamer, I have a few male avatars. When you play a game for so long, once in a while when you make a new character, you want some variety. One thing that I have noticed is that when I play male characters, no one hits on them at all. They just leave you alone. Also, some people seem to think it's pretty darn funny. The reactions I've gotten on teamspeak when playing a male char range from, "Who are you?" to, "THAT'S SO FREAKING AWESOME! A CHICK PLAYING A GUY!"
When it comes down to it, most of us are playing games to have a blast, not go date hunting. With this in mind, I don't think it really matters if you're playing a guy, a girl, or a 6 foot bunny rabbit. You're just wasting time and enjoying yourself.
"We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing."
All in all, I found this article to be a summary of stereotypes. But if stereotypes didn't exist, there wouldn't be a word for them. They are all based on things that many of us female gamers have experienced. I've played many MMOG's over the years and I've come across my fair share of people who have treated me differently for being a woman. But that was more often seen 4+ years ago then now, it's amazing what a difference a couple of years make when dealing with internet activities.
The one thing I was surprised to see was 3. She never complains. And the example about being asked how the persons day was, then implying that the female would go on and on about how bad her day was. I do not find that to be accurate at all. Almost every female that I game with, myself included, are just the opposite. We want our privacy, we're playing a game to get away from real life so why would we rehash the day in a game chatbox?
If I'm asked how my day was, I'll say "fine, thanks" or "not bad" and that is that. No elaboration. The rest of the article was, like I said above, stereotypes that we've read in SO many other articles. I'm quite tired of this issue and think that it's been written about quite badly too many times.
I'm playing games to play a game. Not to figure out who my quest partner is in real life. And if I did want to know if that female character was a man in real life, you better believe I'm not going to base my judgement on the amount of dancing they do or the name they pick (but honestly, why would I ever need to know if the person was a man or a woman?).
Also, hop onto one of the girl gamer websites and check out some of the name databases and name generator suggestions, you'll see right there that your number 6 is inaccurate.
Like someone else said, "A journalists most important work is to create a debate". If that was the goal, you succeeded. But as a first article, I would think it would be smarter to write something based on fact.
The article amused me but in reality it doesn't matter who's behind the pixels, be it man or woman. As a female gamer I somewhat resent guys attitudes towards me. I'm offered help more than guys are, I'm offered items, and asked if I need "anything" while in game. And its just as bad in vent. I don't know how many times I've heard one guy spill out something crude/inflammitory/offensive only to be jumped on by another (sometimes more than one) guildie with something like "Dude, shut up there a girl in vent."
WTF?!
I'm female, yes, but that doesnt mean I should be treated any differently than anyone else in the guild. I can't count the number of times I've gotten into vent with someone who didnt know me and heard, "OMG its a girl!" Like we're a dying species or something.
Girls DO play games. Alot of them won't speak in vent or say that they really are a girl because of the BS we have to put up with. If I beat someone in a duel they get laughed at because they were beaten by a girl.... Because I happen to have breasts means its something amazing for me to be a good player?! I don't know how many people have asked me to cyber. WTF? Just because you can't get laid IRL doesnt mean anyone in the game want to e-sex your dumbazz either. I really don't mind guildies wanting to help me out... its great for a guild to be like a family. But when I'm the one being singled out and asked if I, specifically, need anything, anything at all... it gets annoying. I'm not helpless, I'm not a user, and no I don't need your help while I'm solo grinding, or your gold to train, or anything else for that matter.
Alot of girls I know feel the same way. We want to be treated as gamers, not as girl gamers. The reproductive equiptment your born with shouldn't matter. Its how you play and what you can do that counts.
Nice post but I think you missed the intent of the article, personally it doesn't matter to me who's behind the toon, but players, especially newer players, get suckered everyday.
They only get "suckered" because they forget that the game is only the game, and try to go behind it for something that it was never designed for.
The approach I have always liked best is:
1. Never ever give your real name to anyone in a game, no ifs. Never.
2. Play the game first and get a grip with the community - some WoW servers I found the community simply revolting, oddly enough the Horde side on the RPPvP server I play on now is actually a really nice community, better than the PvE servers I tried. Go figure. Besides, BE's look good, even if they have only a few really nice haistryles. Where is playable Dark Iron Dwarf when you want one ?
3. Stay interested, and play the game on a home network. Nothing say "move along citizen, nothing to see here" like a discrete tell indicating that the direction the conversation is heading is not acceptable, or just say "pssst she's 12, please play nice" - whether it's true or not, pretty much anyone who isn't also 12 will back off. If not, well you're still watching and if it's not time to read a book instead decent games prioritise harassment reports for their GM queues.
4. Don't kill the fun, but do think things through. MMOs are not something to let kids rush into, if there are 8.5 million subscribers in a game it almost certainly has everyone - really lovely people, right through to people you don't want to be there (and that the company would probably want to boot too). There are some really great PC offline and PS2 etc games.
I don't care who is at the computer, male or female it's a game and that's all, whether someone wants it to be more than that or not. It's great to have fun online with online friends, but unless you know them in real life you really don't know them at all. Which is why playing online with people you know in real life is just such a great way to go
I'm not going to be very popular by saying this, but in 2 years of playing World of Warcraft, I've learned to instinctively feel who "could" be a woman player. As I've been a tank for those 2 years, never left Prot spec longer than 1 Hour, Including lvls 10-60, I've had to learn to pay attention to other players, and their behavior, and I've found that most real women players do indeed not fit the profile of overexaggerated feminine behavior.
The rule I substract from this instinct, is that 9 out of 10 female players, seems to get "distracted" very fast. Apparently paying too much attention to the beautiful coloring of the instance, or that flower in the corner, or perhaps even scared of the virtual mice, THAT I do not know, but whenever I encounter someone that seems to be always doing something other than what they're supposed to be doing in such an obvious way that its almost ridiculously hilarious, 9 out of 10 responds positive to the question whether they are female players.
At the same time, 8 out of these 9 players, are st
on star wars galacies you can be a dancer and get xp , but anyway not those loser guys who play as girls know what to not do to make themselves be more like a girl so this article is kind of helps them, but at least it helps you know what to look out for
!st off, I played CoV/CoH and 2 gamers in my supergroup were female. We knew it cause they hung out with us in ventrillo daily, and they wore all kinds of pink on most of their characters as well as create them busty.
Second , in SWG there was entertainment classes, where one type you could get xp by people watching you dance. At the same time they got a buff. So saying "there has yet to be an MMO where you gain xp from dancing" would be a false statement.
I'm gonna have to agree with one of the other replies here and say the author has never played with real female gamers. Or didnt know when he did.
Lets see I have been in MMORP gaming sense 2002 , Everquest, WoW, Everquest 2 and a list of beta testing on those and other games.
Here is some of my experence on the issue at hand as a female gamer who plays female characters. I actually got treated worse than the gender benders, or *cough* certain kinds of rp ers or male characters. I didnt play the tease game so there was a tendancy to put me off once new guild members or members of a regular group found out I wasnt going to play "the game".
I suppose If I had worked up a vocabulary of *tee hee*s and flirty responces that would have helped but considering how many personel tells trying to initiate suggestive conversatons I got when I wasnt being flirty ... well ... no, lol thats all I have to say about that.
I'm only flirty with my husband and I kind of like it that way. Do I make pretty characters .. sure why would I want an avatar that isnt beautiful? Even in wow though you dont have to over expose your self that much if you dont want to. The tabards and shirts will cover any lacking armor in the right places if you want it to.
I did do some experimenting on my own to see if there was a difference in gender treatment though and I actually found that when I played a male character (I tried this for a short time in both everquest and wow) I was actually treated better than when I played a female. I got a lot of statements that included the word "bro" and offered me lots of regrouping opportunities and gifts.
I think the actual truth is that with many of the male players of these game they expect the female characters to be part of the intertainment and if you dont go along with that your not treated well. That being said I have a feeling that many of the gender benders are aware of that and are willing to play that game to get extra benefits from their fellow players.
That does lend some validity to the OP, with regard to gender benders. Its important to note that many female gamers are not a part of this though and that what we are really about has not really been addressed by the gamer community IMO.
Do we exist in significant numbers? Yes .. more than you might want to believe.
i dont kno if its been posted but proly has but (there has yet to be an MMO where you gain XP for dancing). SWG gave xp for dancing and even more if ppl watched you.
Comments
i copied all this stuff down in a notebookso i can refer to it when i bump into a "girl" in any game.
Fakers Beware.
It's not just you...
Kalmenicus knows.
-In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on Aug/13/08-
|
RISING DRAGOON ~AION US ONLINE LEGION for Elyos
Get this; I played a male rogue and decided to hit on female AVs for fun. Apparently I'm really good at it because two of them actually gave me really nice items after I told them stories of my woes. I played a male enchanter in EQ and I was getting women wanting to send me RL photos of themselves and their numbers. <----- THAT is where I draw the line. When I'm playing a game I like to KEEP it a game. Once you start throwing around RL information it can get ugly fast and also kills my imagination. In the past when I didn't mean to give out personal information I trashed my character and made a new one. I play female and male toons and it depends on what I feel like roleplaying at the time of creation.
Will this article help others? Maybe if they are new gamers and didn't know that people were doing this, otherwise it just fuels a debate or makes you laugh. Many have known about it for years and still continue to be had. In RL this occurs when you trust and believe in others. I had a friend in EQ who fell in love with another player. He got married to her in the game and spent a very long time acquiring armor, weapons and other items for her just to find out she was a man. That female AV disappeared never to be seen again. My friend was really heartbroken. So, what did he do? Heh, he did it again. (Warning: For politically correct lovers I'm about to make a gender stereotype) In closing, MEN are dense.
Funny. I read the OP but started ignoring the posts when they started flaming.
I thought I'd just mention a funny thing that occurred to me as I read this post. I play MMOs with my girlfriend. We've used teamspeak and vent in different MMOs over the years. When other people realize she's a r/l female, they always behave better.
There's usually a big difference when there's a female online compared to when it's "just the boys." People aren't nearly as rude or crass or offensive when she's online. Also, guilds are much quicker to invite me (us) to raids when she is online.
I could get into the reasons for it, but that would just be flame-bait and I'm not interested in keeping track of all that.
Thanks for the OP, it's a fun read.
- Phos
Hold on Snow Leopard, imma let you finish, but Windows had one of the best operating systems of all time.
If the Powerball lottery was like Lotro, nobody would win for 2 years, and then everyone in Nebraska would win on the same day.
And then Nebraska would get nerfed.-pinkwood lotro fourms
AMD 4800 2.4ghz-3GB RAM 533mhz-EVGA 9500GT 512mb-320gb HD
I neglected to mention that, as a female gamer, I have a few male avatars. When you play a game for so long, once in a while when you make a new character, you want some variety. One thing that I have noticed is that when I play male characters, no one hits on them at all. They just leave you alone. Also, some people seem to think it's pretty darn funny. The reactions I've gotten on teamspeak when playing a male char range from, "Who are you?" to, "THAT'S SO FREAKING AWESOME! A CHICK PLAYING A GUY!"
When it comes down to it, most of us are playing games to have a blast, not go date hunting. With this in mind, I don't think it really matters if you're playing a guy, a girl, or a 6 foot bunny rabbit. You're just wasting time and enjoying yourself.
"We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing."
The one thing I was surprised to see was 3. She never complains. And the example about being asked how the persons day was, then implying that the female would go on and on about how bad her day was. I do not find that to be accurate at all. Almost every female that I game with, myself included, are just the opposite. We want our privacy, we're playing a game to get away from real life so why would we rehash the day in a game chatbox?
If I'm asked how my day was, I'll say "fine, thanks" or "not bad" and that is that. No elaboration. The rest of the article was, like I said above, stereotypes that we've read in SO many other articles. I'm quite tired of this issue and think that it's been written about quite badly too many times.
I'm playing games to play a game. Not to figure out who my quest partner is in real life. And if I did want to know if that female character was a man in real life, you better believe I'm not going to base my judgement on the amount of dancing they do or the name they pick (but honestly, why would I ever need to know if the person was a man or a woman?).
Also, hop onto one of the girl gamer websites and check out some of the name databases and name generator suggestions, you'll see right there that your number 6 is inaccurate.
Like someone else said, "A journalists most important work is to create a debate". If that was the goal, you succeeded. But as a first article, I would think it would be smarter to write something based on fact.
The article amused me but in reality it doesn't matter who's behind the pixels, be it man or woman. As a female gamer I somewhat resent guys attitudes towards me. I'm offered help more than guys are, I'm offered items, and asked if I need "anything" while in game. And its just as bad in vent. I don't know how many times I've heard one guy spill out something crude/inflammitory/offensive only to be jumped on by another (sometimes more than one) guildie with something like "Dude, shut up there a girl in vent."
WTF?!
I'm female, yes, but that doesnt mean I should be treated any differently than anyone else in the guild. I can't count the number of times I've gotten into vent with someone who didnt know me and heard, "OMG its a girl!" Like we're a dying species or something.
Girls DO play games. Alot of them won't speak in vent or say that they really are a girl because of the BS we have to put up with. If I beat someone in a duel they get laughed at because they were beaten by a girl.... Because I happen to have breasts means its something amazing for me to be a good player?! I don't know how many people have asked me to cyber. WTF? Just because you can't get laid IRL doesnt mean anyone in the game want to e-sex your dumbazz either. I really don't mind guildies wanting to help me out... its great for a guild to be like a family. But when I'm the one being singled out and asked if I, specifically, need anything, anything at all... it gets annoying. I'm not helpless, I'm not a user, and no I don't need your help while I'm solo grinding, or your gold to train, or anything else for that matter.
Alot of girls I know feel the same way. We want to be treated as gamers, not as girl gamers. The reproductive equiptment your born with shouldn't matter. Its how you play and what you can do that counts.
It's MMORPG -> RP = Roleplaying
When people start playing the game and not thinking who is the real life person behind the character.
MMORPG.COM has worst forum editor ever exists
They only get "suckered" because they forget that the game is only the game, and try to go behind it for something that it was never designed for.
The approach I have always liked best is:
1. Never ever give your real name to anyone in a game, no ifs. Never.
2. Play the game first and get a grip with the community - some WoW servers I found the community simply revolting, oddly enough the Horde side on the RPPvP server I play on now is actually a really nice community, better than the PvE servers I tried. Go figure. Besides, BE's look good, even if they have only a few really nice haistryles. Where is playable Dark Iron Dwarf when you want one
3. Stay interested, and play the game on a home network. Nothing say "move along citizen, nothing to see here" like a discrete tell indicating that the direction the conversation is heading is not acceptable, or just say "pssst she's 12, please play nice" - whether it's true or not, pretty much anyone who isn't also 12 will back off. If not, well you're still watching and if it's not time to read a book instead decent games prioritise harassment reports for their GM queues.
4. Don't kill the fun, but do think things through. MMOs are not something to let kids rush into, if there are 8.5 million subscribers in a game it almost certainly has everyone - really lovely people, right through to people you don't want to be there (and that the company would probably want to boot too). There are some really great PC offline and PS2 etc games.
I don't care who is at the computer, male or female it's a game and that's all, whether someone wants it to be more than that or not. It's great to have fun online with online friends, but unless you know them in real life you really don't know them at all. Which is why playing online with people you know in real life is just such a great way to go
I'm not going to be very popular by saying this, but in 2 years of playing World of Warcraft, I've learned to instinctively feel who "could" be a woman player. As I've been a tank for those 2 years, never left Prot spec longer than 1 Hour, Including lvls 10-60, I've had to learn to pay attention to other players, and their behavior, and I've found that most real women players do indeed not fit the profile of overexaggerated feminine behavior.
The rule I substract from this instinct, is that 9 out of 10 female players, seems to get "distracted" very fast. Apparently paying too much attention to the beautiful coloring of the instance, or that flower in the corner, or perhaps even scared of the virtual mice, THAT I do not know, but whenever I encounter someone that seems to be always doing something other than what they're supposed to be doing in such an obvious way that its almost ridiculously hilarious, 9 out of 10 responds positive to the question whether they are female players.
At the same time, 8 out of these 9 players, are st
on star wars galacies you can be a dancer and get xp , but anyway not those loser guys who play as girls know what to not do to make themselves be more like a girl so this article is kind of helps them, but at least it helps you know what to look out for
Second , in SWG there was entertainment classes, where one type you could get xp by people watching you dance. At the same time they got a buff. So saying "there has yet to be an MMO where you gain xp from dancing" would be a false statement.
I'm gonna have to agree with one of the other replies here and say the author has never played with real female gamers. Or didnt know when he did.
Lets see I have been in MMORP gaming sense 2002 , Everquest, WoW, Everquest 2 and a list of beta testing on those and other games.
Here is some of my experence on the issue at hand as a female gamer who plays female characters. I actually got treated worse than the gender benders, or *cough* certain kinds of rp ers or male characters. I didnt play the tease game so there was a tendancy to put me off once new guild members or members of a regular group found out I wasnt going to play "the game".
I suppose If I had worked up a vocabulary of *tee hee*s and flirty responces that would have helped but considering how many personel tells trying to initiate suggestive conversatons I got when I wasnt being flirty ... well ... no, lol thats all I have to say about that.
I'm only flirty with my husband and I kind of like it that way. Do I make pretty characters .. sure why would I want an avatar that isnt beautiful? Even in wow though you dont have to over expose your self that much if you dont want to. The tabards and shirts will cover any lacking armor in the right places if you want it to.
I did do some experimenting on my own to see if there was a difference in gender treatment though and I actually found that when I played a male character (I tried this for a short time in both everquest and wow) I was actually treated better than when I played a female. I got a lot of statements that included the word "bro" and offered me lots of regrouping opportunities and gifts.
I think the actual truth is that with many of the male players of these game they expect the female characters to be part of the intertainment and if you dont go along with that your not treated well. That being said I have a feeling that many of the gender benders are aware of that and are willing to play that game to get extra benefits from their fellow players.
That does lend some validity to the OP, with regard to gender benders. Its important to note that many female gamers are not a part of this though and that what we are really about has not really been addressed by the gamer community IMO.
Do we exist in significant numbers? Yes .. more than you might want to believe.
I'm Here. I'm Awesome. Get Used To It.