Shell’s note: This is the first post here in a week due to useless “editors” and we apologise, you may slap me in-game.
I don’t know about you but I’ve been seeing a suspiciously high number of female Draenei wandering around lately. They all seem to be in my guild as well. And my guild consists of mostly male players. So what’s with this boys who like being girls thing? I feel like I can make this outrageously sexist comment because I rarely see a female player putting her toon through a sex change operation—and if she does it’s to go from being a male toon to a female toon.
Gender selection is not a new topic in virtual/online games research. I suspect for academics who were curious about “What we do” in games, they found this ability to preselect our gender a very interesting aspect of a virtual game/world/culture that prompted questions. Are we curious about exploring other bodies? Are there desires for other-genderedness that we can only really explore in a virtual environment? Does it let us safely explore what may be forbidden or impossible otherwise?
Now with all due respect to those esteemed researchers who do touch on realities among some gamers out there, my years of gaming, questioning, and observing points to other reasons that we (mostly guys) seem to prefer playing other genders. For Joe Average Gamer, it often comes down to the following issues:
2. Would I rather stare at a male or female ass the entire time?
3. Am I going to get more help if the other person I am interacting with actually allows himself to believe that because my avatar is female that maybe, just maybe, I’m a hot female (with a perfect bosom) in real life too?
4. Will seeing a hot female body beat the hell out of something keep me warm at night?
As I’m a researcher, I must ensure I ground my observations in supported data. Consider the following excerpts (I have changed the names to protect the innocent) relating to why we change genders:
*****
Gamer guy 1 whispers: I have played as a guy for 3 years so needed a change
*****
[speaking with male players]
Monava: So how many of you guys have changed genders on your toons?
Gamer guy 2: <<<<<
Monava: How come you did it? was there a reason?
Gamer guy 3: Erm my shaman used to have man bits 
Gamer guy 2: I was sick of looking at a fat male arse
Monava: You snipped your boy-shaman?!
Gamer guy 2: Aye
Gamer guy 3: Yeah
Gamer guy 2: Cut his b*****ks off
Gamer guy 4: Done on my hunter but it was a mistake
Gamer guy 3: Female Draenei have nicer hooves
Gamer guy 5: I have a thing for hooves!
Monava: Gamer guy 4, you did it by accident?
Gamer guy 4: Yes I did
Monava: How did you do it by accident?
Gamer guy 3: This is what happens when you run round Azeroth nekkid
Gamer guy 4: I didn’t scroll down on the site enough was supposed to do a faction change
*****
Monava: How many male players here recently changed their toon genders to female?
Female gamer 1: [My husband] always plays a female..it worries me
Female gamer 1: I want to know why ??
Female gamer 2: [My character] is going female, its just not right playing a male char!
Female gamer 1: Ye its not
Female gamer 2: I cant do it either
Gamer guy 1: ‘Cos some people prefer to look at boobs
Gamer guy 1: Apparently
Female gamer 2: Haha
Female gamer 1: He can look at mine! lol
Gamer guy 2: My explanation of playing only female chars are simple I play that much I dont want to stare into a male char’s ass all the time
Gamer guy 3: That’s my reason as well
Gamer guy 2: That’s the reason i changed
Gamer guy 2: Rather stare at the behind of a female creature lol
Female gamer 3: I have to stare at an asexual tree the whole time… 
And maybe that’s what it comes down to at the end–no one wants to stare at a tree all the time and, maybe, just maybe, men are flattering us women by preferring to look at one of our posteriors instead of one of their own.
Related posts:
If you enjoyed this post, or if you hated it and want to flame us more often, consider subscribing to our RSS feed. Does that sound like gibberish? More infoz over yonder.
I did change to a girl Draenei for a while but male Draenies are just overly annoying, but after I changed to a female as soon as the race change came up I slipped into a dwarf, i think people just get bored of staying the same if you have the choice of being different.
Picking a female char as a male is something I always found retarded I don’t know why =/. Also when I played my ex her char every now and then it would surprise me how desperate some guys were, buying me wedding rings and sometimes epics.
I changed my DK from male undead to female tauren, mostly because I liked the way the armour looks on female tauren (not a big fan of plate armour on undead, clothie undead look good though).
I picked a female draenei out of pure random selection, theres no desperation involved and it seems most people (including jodie) prefer me as a female draenei. I agree with Exopah’s comment that male draenei are overly annoying and in my opinion are just far too big and out of proportion.
Only choice I would understand is playing a NELF female over a male…nelf males are just gay.
My human warrior, draenei shammy and nelf druid are all female. I am not sure where it started but primarily as I have to see them whenever I play I wanted someone a little more pleasing on the eyes. Its also funny seeing boys /w me and then getting scared when I tell them I am a bloke.
I hide nothing but I also dont advertise that I am a male player – maybe I should see a shrink… possibly I am a bit twisted inside =D
It’s down to looks and sounds for me. My first and still main character is my male UD warlock. I play it the most, do the achieves on it and spend most of the gear on it. My second toon was a female UD priest, it was a bit different and I guess it was a bit sexist but I thought the male ud dps was right for my character and a female ud healer was right for that role (she became shadow in TBC though and I did a name change to reflect that).
After that, my mage and paladin were both female blood elves, the male blood elf annoys me in so many ways, the looks are an aside but the voice, the animation and the general way they are – I just wouldn’t want to play them. I preferred elf to troll / ud for the mage and of course the limitations of class make the pally obvious.
I suppose though, looks also help, it’s nice to look at the female characters when playing though I can’t say they’re sexual (I’m sure we’ve all seen that video of a kid caught jacking off to his naked nelf dancing) just more appealing than the male ones. Is it a choice to play a female character because you prefer looking at females?
My Blood Elf Paladin is female. When creating my Pala I didn’t notice male was an option, they’re both pretty female to me.
No seriously I just can’t stand the male BElf laugh, the female one annoys me slightly less so I went female. I still avoid saying ‘lol’ though.
Might make the Paladin a Tauren when I get the chance.
Most of my toons are male (like me) but only ’cause it just doesn’t seem logical to me to choose anything else.
Oddly, I rarely look at my own toon so don’t have the ‘staring at a male ass’ problem – too busy glued to health bars and wondering why my own health is going down…
That said, I do have a female belf… It’s a long story! OK, so I was drunk!! NOTHING HAPPENED!!!
For me it mostly depends on the class and race. My first warrior was a dwarf, so I made it male, my priest was human and so I made it female. Maybe it’s clische’ but a warrior to me makes more sense as male, and a priest (judging from ancient times) makes more sense as a female, also more realistic in terms of what they are wearing (plate/cloth). I find for example female blood elf pala tanks too unrealistic, cos they look so fragile and still wear plate.. Doesn’t make much sense.
One reason I see myself choosing female over male tho is because it looks a bit smaller, (currently playing orc warrior, and he’s pretty much like a square box in size). That’s a good way of reducing size without losing racials (as opposed to going to undead for example).
i have two male toons both my favourite ones to play and im a lady
Mogs was a man orc, and I am a female, except I caved in and made him a girl.
Male Belf ftw.
I used to be Undead Male but then I race changed to Belf Male because I was sick of how gear looks on Undead characters.. freakin bones sticking out of my beautiful robes :< and because of the WotF nerf that was officially announced at that time.
Why I picked Male over Female? because I think it's weird to play a female char instead of a male one if you are a male yourself.. ofc its a fantasy game and blablabla but I just cant play a female char, just cant do it.
Ofc there are some things you DONT want to do as a Belf Male.. like /dance for example.. used to like that as my Undead but I havent typed the emote in a long while on my Belf. I do like /silly better now though.