Guild Wars 2

Norn Female Warrior x2
Norn Female Ranger
Norn Female Necromancer
Charr Female Thief
:)

Norn-male-Ranger

Norn Female Warrior
Norn Female Guardian
Human Female Egnineer
Human Male Ranger
Sylvari Female Necromancer
Charr Female Mesmer
Asura Female Thief

I think if anything this is proving that the forums are not a good measure of the playerbase at large… :P Especially these forums where most anybody without a PHD has been banned by overzealous moderators for ‘nonconstructive’ posts.

Male Norn Elementalist by the way.

Conncept.7638:

I think if anything this is proving that the forums are not a good measure of the playerbase at large… :P

Yeah well at least its a good measure of players who use the forums and respond to this sort of thread!

Asura Female Ranger
Asura Female Warrior
Sylvari Female Engineer
Charr Female Elementalist
Asura Female Mesmer
Human Female Thief
Human Female Necro

Sylvari Female Elementalist
Asura Female Mesmer

I’ll figure out the others one day. =0

Thanks to everyone who replied! I’m going to stop adding to the poll now, because the tallies for the populous humans have started wrapping to the next line, sort of ruining my bar graph look. That, and it wasn’t easy keeping up with all the replies! I just wanted to do this poll to get an idea of what people like the most, and maybe what goes into their decision process when they enter the character creation screen.

Some things I gathered from the results:
1) Despite many people’s opinions (my own included) that humans are a boring race, they’re obviously still the most popular by a landslide!
2) The distribution of professions is actually a lot more even than I expected it would be. If I continued the poll, I have the feeling they’d even out even more
3) The female population beat out the males in every race except the Charr… I guess I’m not surprised about the Charr females being somewhat left in the cold, but I had thought the male-female division among other races would be more even. Nope, ladies win. Quite possibly because among our playerbase, the gentlemen win. :P
4) Guys think Norn men are cartoonish and goofy looking. Just learned that today, thanks for clearing that up. :P Charr are apparently the preferred brute type character.
5) The idea of male Elementalists and Mesmers is apparently quite awful to people.
6) It’s apparently almost inconceivable for a Sylvari to be a warrior.

Anyway. This was fun.

Charr – Male – Warrior
Human- Female – Thief
Human – Female – Necromancer
Sylvari – Female – Elementalist
Asura – Female – Ranger

Melchior.2135:

Also, I used to work as a GM for another MMO, and between data mining and outright polling some of our players we were able to paint a very interesting picture of player gender choice. The short version is that female players play male characters about as often as male players play female characters (just over 2/5ths of the time in either case), but often cite very different reasons for doing so. That was a pretty different game though, and the question of gender differences in fantasy races is a pretty huge complication we didn’t have to deal with.

I don’t really have to guess too hard about why male players play female characters, but what were the reasons that female players play male characters?

I have all races:

human- female- elementalist
norn – male- thief
sylvari-female- guardian
asura-male warrior
charr-male engineer

I have deleted mesmer, and when the game improves ill buy another slot to try necro.

schizandra.4587:

Melchior.2135:

Also, I used to work as a GM for another MMO, and between data mining and outright polling some of our players we were able to paint a very interesting picture of player gender choice. The short version is that female players play male characters about as often as male players play female characters (just over 2/5ths of the time in either case), but often cite very different reasons for doing so. That was a pretty different game though, and the question of gender differences in fantasy races is a pretty huge complication we didn’t have to deal with.

I don’t really have to guess too hard about why male players play female characters, but what were the reasons that female players play male characters?

In no particular order:

- Simple aesthetics. Some liked the look of certain gear or techniques on male characters more. Some were also offended by a perceived lack of modest clothing options for female characters.
- They were tired of being crudely propositioned and/or viciously harassed, often by the same individuals.
- They were taking advantage of minute but demonstrable differences in animations that favored male characters with fractionally quicker abilities in some situations (or… they thought they were taking advantage of those things, but hadn’t been keeping up to date with the patch notes).
- They were Roleplayers, and being a person of a different gender is no more of a stretch than being a Wizard or a Space Monkey or a Robot or whatever.
- They were the other kind of Roleplayers, and their character needed to be an expression of their own sexual fantasies for them to properly enjoy ERP.
- They were altaholics, and wanted to differentiate character #15 from characters #1-14.
- They honestly did not give a crap what their character looked like, and after selecting a class, either left the character appearance in the default configuration, or just hit the random button until the tutorial started.
- Some of the male characters had shapely buttocks, and some of the female players did not mind watching them run.

My chars:

- Norn – Male – Guardian
- Norn – Female – Elementalist
- Human – Male – Engineer
- Sylvari – Female – Mesmer

Melchior.2135:

In no particular order:

- Simple aesthetics. Some liked the look of certain gear or techniques on male characters more. Some were also offended by a perceived lack of modest clothing options for female characters.
- They were tired of being crudely propositioned and/or viciously harassed, often by the same individuals.
- They were taking advantage of minute but demonstrable differences in animations that favored male characters with fractionally quicker abilities in some situations (or… they thought they were taking advantage of those things, but hadn’t been keeping up to date with the patch notes).
- They were Roleplayers, and being a person of a different gender is no more of a stretch than being a Wizard or a Space Monkey or a Robot or whatever.
- They were the other kind of Roleplayers, and their character needed to be an expression of their own sexual fantasies for them to properly enjoy ERP.
- They were altaholics, and wanted to differentiate character #15 from characters #1-14.
- They honestly did not give a crap what their character looked like, and after selecting a class, either left the character appearance in the default configuration, or just hit the random button until the tutorial started.
- Some of the male characters had shapely buttocks, and some of the female players did not mind watching them run.

See, if some dude is bothering me on an MMO based on what my character looks like, I just tell him that I’m a guy… and start flirting back. Works like a charm! Lol. I haven’t really had that issue in GW2. I guess guys don’t really want to hit on a salad. But the Sylvari are still really beautiful to ME, so it’s win win.

Male Charr Warrior
Male Asura Engineer
Female Human Elementalist
Female Norn Necromancer
Male Slyvari Mesmer

I would love to see another one of those graphics that was done right around release showing which professions were most played, which race, gender and crafting professions.

Female Asura Mesmer 80
Female Human Thief 80
Female Sylvari Guardian 62
Female Human Elementalist 48
Female Human Ranger 25
Female Human Necromancer 13
Female Norn Warrior 10
Female Charr Engineer 8

I don’t play male characters, being female I find it weird to play as male characters. I can’t really relate very well so I feel disconnected. If I were male however I’d play mostly Charr and Asura.

I love my asura but my asura mesmer is so special to me I don’t really want to make another one or I’d have far more asura. I like sylvari but my problem with them is that they are too tall. I wanted them to be a head shorter than the smallest human, they feel too chunky and big from what I had imagined them to be like.

I could only really play a norn warrior, I don’t really like huge characters for female as I’m small IRL but she’s cool for a warrior. As for charr, engineer just feels really nice for them and who doesn’t like kitties!

Most my characters are human simply because I like their gear better, more interesting looks as well and they aren’t massive like norn.

Sylvari – Female – Mesmer
Sylvari – Female – Ranger
Azura – Female Guardian
Human – Female – Elementalist
Sylvari – Male – Warrior

It would almost be amazing how even the distribution would be, except the poll count alts but doesn’t distinguish between serious and nonserious alts.

My own list is like this:

Sylvari – Female – Guardian
Sylvari – Female – Necromancer
Human – Female – Elementalist
Human – Female – Thief
Undecided

I just don’t like playing male characters. I feel that male heroes are incomplete because they lack the beauty that can only be found in the female form.