Guild Wars 2

I don’t know dude. I’ve played other MMOs before and I never wanted a female character. This game made me want to make one though. So I did, and I’m loving her.

Now I don’t roleplay or act like a female. So your point is moot. And no, don’t say you said “most dudes,” because you will have a good majority who will say otherwise.

I actually picked a female for my mesmer because I thought all the light armor looked terrible on males. I have a male ranger as my main.

Swapping gender is nice for a change of pace once in a while. Nothing wrong with it.

My Avatar will never ever be female.
I have noted that in recent years more men are playing as female characters, especially as Human ones, as the opening poster said. So I always assume their owners are male until proven otherwise.

I’ve unintentionally followed a pattern over the years. My first character exploring through the content is always male and I view him as “me”. Other characters where I’m playing on TS with friends or PvP will generally be male as well because I see them as “me” also.

But once the game settles in, I invariably make a couple/few other toons. These are the ones that I’m going to spend hours with grinding gear and completing maps and content on. I generally view them as “not me”. This toon I’m guiding and watching over and making better. These are almost always female – I’m not going with waste all that time with trinkets for “me” and I’m certainly not going to waste it helping a male toon (he can find someone else to help him -lazy punk!).

I tend to have a 50:50 ratio of male to female characters in any RPG I play. The choice of gender typically comes down to what I feel would suit the role I want that character to have better. For GW2, I have:

1. Female Human Mesmer.
2. Female Norn Ranger.
3. Male Asura Elementalist.
4. Male Charr Warrior.
5. Female Sylvari Necromancer.

Did “aesthetics” influence my decision? Quite possibly, given that all my female characters are “humanoid”, but given that I roleplay with all 5 characters, it’s certainly not over any squeamishness about getting into a female mindset.

For the record, my GW1 characters were:

1. Male Necromancer.
2. Female Monk.
3. Male Warrior.
4. Female Assassin.
5. Male Paragon.

Norn females are hotter than the humans any day…if only they were not so big though

I think the difference is some people think they are there toon. Some people just like to make a cool looking toon and don’t try to connect with it.

I have one friend that thinks making female toons is weird but every single toon he makes it every single game always looks just like him in real life. So to him the toon is supose to be him.

To me it just a image on the screen. It’s just a computer image that I want to look cool, Some times It’s a image of a guy some times it a girl.

I think it just stands out so much because majority of the female human faces look the same. :/

I have a female human alt, though I find them rather boring, I wanted to see the other stories. As with that I have one of every race.

In MMOs and other rpgs I usually play a female. I usually like to have some kind of connection with the character. But its usually by gender. I like to experience with different perspectives so I’m not scared of being a different race.

I have nothing against playing male characters though, in most cases I tend to play males if I’m making a warrior or something, just cause, stereotypes. lol. One example, in Dragon Age Origins, when I went to play a dwarf. I could only play a male dwarf because I just couldn’t get into the female ones. /shrug To each their own.

The answer is simple my friend. If I’m going to spend hours looking at an avatar it better be nice looking.

I made the mistake in WoW of rolling and maining a draenei male before race/gender change was made possible. He was so hideous I finally deleted him even though I had over 50k honor kills on him.

All of my human characters are female. Norn characters are male, Charr male, Asura Male, and I don’t have any plants.

The reason I chose female over male is because if I’m going to look at an underwear model while I play I want it to be a female one.

Knote.2904:

Oh, and Human males only have like 1 decent looking face.

This, 1000×. Artists lately are on some kind of “Quasimodo meets Mongloid meets dropped on his head when he was a baby” tear, as the new chic for heroic male visages.

Several other games I’ve played recently did the exact same thing (swtor and amalur come to mind) — most/all of the female faces were at least semi-attractive, but nearly all the male faces were intentionally… weird. I’m all for getting away from boring chiseled/Legolas fantasy stereotypes, but the pendulum has swung completely to the other end of the spectrum.

I’ve already got one human male, with one of the IMO two decent faces. If I end up making another human for some reason, it will probably be female just so I can take my character seriously, versus running around with a circus freak face.

I was hoping for more “seasoned” male faces. I play warrior and melee classes primarily and I just had to laugh at the face options for a male. No way was I going to make a male human warrior with the way they look.

Underwear models and Derek Zoolanders don’t make for the rough, seasoned, battle-scarred look I expected and wanted.

They are hotties. I want to look like her irl….

I can flirt and male players give me nice presents….

I asked my friend this question many years ago in GW1. his answer pretty much sums it up. That answer was (and I quote): “If i’m going to spend a thousand hours staring at my characters butt, it might as well be an attractive female one.”

Stormlight.7568:

I asked my friend this question many years ago in GW1. his answer pretty much sums it up. That answer was (and I quote): “If i’m going to spend a thousand hours staring at my characters butt, it might as well be an attractive female one.”

its not a 1 size fits all thing though . Some people make female characters simply because thats what the character profile they came up with stated . I roll a d4 to determine the sex of my characters and go from there .

Why do people watch the Buffy or Nikita shows etc.? Deadly females just capture the imagination of many people. Maybe it’s about the contrast and the unexpected? Doesn’t mean they want to be one. Or meet one irl gulp.

This is the classic fantasy-or-identification dilemma.

Some people go towards maximal identification with their avatar/character. They want to play a character of same gender as their own, making him/her look how they look or would want to look.

Other people tend more towards a fantasy aspect of their avatar. Majority of these players choose an opposite sex to their own, often due to subconscious sexual motives (very large group are teenagers). This gives them feeling of “having” an object of desire (more than “being” it). They see this character like a doll rather than a representation of their own ego.

Some people have a capability to play both fantasy and identification based characters, of different gender and race. This is how I see it.

As a 27 y/o male, I tend to choose male characters over female ones because I want to focus on game’s content, not how sexy and hot my female character would look for me. I don’t have a need to include another object of desire into my gaming experience.

Not forgetting that 40% of people who play GW2 are actually female….

Actually i think 40% of player are meant to be female (?)

Anyway, I would have rolled sylvari, but they took out the attractive face before release for unknown reasons. And i see kitten all sylvari.

my female friends play male characters <.< also…

Human is boring, I mean we play as human everyday… unless female is not your gender ofcourse.

I think Zamrai has a good point.
It all depends on how you approach a fantasy type game.
When I was younger I liked more outlandish characters especially for RP purposes as it gave me a challenge- this was in Pen and Paper RP ;P

In video games I prefer to play my own gender because I do like to be able to identify with my characters to some extent, it matters more in video games because of the strong visual aspect I think.
I also play with my husband a lot and we have spent 11 years playing various duo’s

In GW2 I made human females because I think the characters are extremely well done. They really do not have to look like Barbie, that is why we have sliders
Actually all the character models are great.

What I do find odd is that anyone actually cares about the gender of the person behind the toon.
What I find even odder is people hitting on a female toon.
My main looks kind of shy and bookish and she gets chatted up so much it makes me wonder what goes on in people’s heads.

Personally, I have an even mix of male and female characters.
2 human males, 1 each of Asura, Charr & Norn.
2 Sylvari females, 2 Norn and 1 Charr.

Human females in GW2 look creepily prepubescent to me and make me feel uncomfortable with how over-sexualised they are.

I love the Rubenesque Norn women, finding they do actually look like women for the most part and not children. And one of them I created purely as a joke; she’s a buxom warrior called “Magnificent Chest”.

The male Sylvari just don’t seem right to me somehow, and I can’t place my finger on what it is. There’s also the realisation and lore that backs up the complete obsolescence of gender in Sylvari society. I also quite like the Sylvari female voice actress.
I don’t dress my Sylvari ladies in a titillating fashion, sticking to practical rather than pretty styles.

Asuran sexes are pretty much interchangeable, and I couldn’t really be bothered to make a female. Sure, there are minor facial differences, but overall and from a distance, they might as well all be the same model.
Oh, also what’s with Asura somehow managing to spontaneously evolve the ability to grow hair? ArenaNet should have been braver here and stuck to their original artistic vision, making all Asura bald. They could have added other, more interesting distinguishing cranial features than hair, such as ridges etc. Instead, all Asura with hair look like they’re wearing badly fitted wigs to me.

And I love how much work ArenaNet put into distinguishing differences between the Charr genders (and to a lesser extent the Norn). There are distinct differences that do not rely on tedious adolescent ideals of gender, and I love how I can tell a female Charr by the bushiness of her tail or a male by the wideness of his features.

So why do I choose to play sexes other than my own?
There’s no one, simple answer, that’s clear, and I find it a shame that people can’t realise that the reasons people choose to play what they play can be more complex and layered than simply testosterone fueled lust.

Mungrul.9358:

reasons people choose to play what they play can be more complex and layered than simply testosterone fueled lust.

In many cases it is “testosterone fueled lust” indeed, may it be concious or not. I’m curious how this tendency goes with player’s age and real life experiences with opposite gender.

For the rest of the cases I think only an experienced psychiatrist would be able to give a deeper answer to this. I’m pretty sure there were some studies on this sort of cross-gender role-playing but I haven’t got any insight to their results unfortunately.

For me (male), it’s a bit about aesthetics. My main character (my only one at the moment) is a female human thief. Why? Well, my thief should be agile, fragile and elegant. The female human fit’s this best. I tried several combinations during BETA already.

What characters are to come? I think it will be male charr engineer, male azuran elementalist, male human guardian, and a sylvari… maybe necro, or mesmer, but I think this will be a female plant.

@Shredicus lool epic thread, you made me laugh with the end-pictures

Conncept.7638:

http://www.gamerevolution.com/news/guild-wars-2-gender-profession-race-and-craft-statistics-released-15061
I play a male Norn, because I can actually look like a man as a norn.

I don’t like those bull necks those Norn have…

My main is female because I wanted to re-use the character from GW1. And a male with the name Lady Rhonwyn would look silly!

I do have a male Charr (2 in fact), a male Norn and a male Sylvari… And I want a male human as well at some point…

To OP:

Meh – I just don’t care to have the conversation. If a dude wants to roll a female char – cool? Who am I to dissect their psyche on why they would rather choose a female character to represent their idealized selves in a fantasy setting where their character(s) must overcome challenges and complete numerous difficult tasks to complete the game?

It’s called “GW2” “Girls Wars 2” for a reason @ OP!

Don’t be fooled by this “guild” stuff – has no big meaning anyway.

I think there should be many more pretty girls around slaughtering poor monsters and each other.

A good portion of players already seem to understand that. Don’t be so stubborn, if you can’t beat them, join them!

My main is a female Sylvari thief. Basically because I’ve had the name “Tosha daydreamer” since GW1 and I wanted my main to adopt it. My other characters are either male or female, depending on race (human males are too sissy looking, while Asura females are too boring for example). I was a little disappointed with the male faces though. They are too pretty-boyish. If I want to create a MAN, I have to look elsewhere.

Now. Guess my gender.

Mungrul.9358:

Oh, also what’s with Asura somehow managing to spontaneously evolve the ability to grow hair? ArenaNet should have been braver here and stuck to their original artistic vision, making all Asura bald. They could have added other, more interesting distinguishing cranial features than hair, such as ridges etc. Instead, all Asura with hair look like they’re wearing badly fitted wigs to me.

Vekk’s got hair. He was in GW1. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Vekk.jpg and so do other asura from GW1 http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Asura_child_f.jpg

As to those who choose to play a character that’s not their own gender I’ve already stated my opinion: let them have their own reason, even if it’s something as base as starting at a character’s behind. Telling people their reason is wrong is full of the idea that you know better than they do what they should do. Which is simply not the case.
I have 6 characters, half female and half male. They’re characters and not representations of myself, and as a result I view them as fictional people who are not me. Would some of you have a problem if a male author wrote a story involving both male and female characters? I think not. In many cases that is what is going on here.

Ive got mostly female caracters but i must say i dig my norn male guardian the most he just looks like a killin machine

I am not sure what the point really is.

Is the complaint that there are too many people playing human females?

Or is the complaint that there are a lot of guys (like myself) who play female toons in general?

They are separate issues as I see it.

Why play female? Well, I don’t identify with male toons much because of the character models that usually look ridiculous to me. They are generally either too feminine as guys or too bulky.
Someone once asked in another game forum, why he couldn’t play a wizard that actually looks like an old man….I understand that question.

So, let’s play females instead cause they look hot or something. It is fantasy. But then human females apparently are the only ones in this game that are really allowed to look hot. Norn armours generally don’t.

So yeh, for me I blame the lack of interesting male toon models and the lack of better looking armour for most races. Oh and of course a lot of people who come from GW1 are used to playing humans as they were the only race available.

Think about it. Norn look like big humans but females aren’t allowed sexy looks (personal opinion). Asuran are funny and quirky but are mostly played because they are small targets in pvp I reckon. Sylvari…well, they are unique but perhaps a bit too unique and Trahearne as npc destroyed any hopes of ever playing a sylvari for me. And Charr, well not everybody likes furballs and they were the enemy in GW1 just as much as any other monster.

So I’d say all in all it’s not so surprising to me.

You’re not gay for playing a male toon as a male. That’s nonesense. I will just state that I like female characters because they look better to me. The comment that guys play females because “they don’t want to stare at a male butt all day” was originally more a joke not a real argument. It was made because a lot of people didn’t get why people play opposite gender toons compared to themselves.

In every game I do try to make male toons but they either look to feminine for a guy or ridiculously bulky and the faces generally look too smooth. I am 41 years old. I don’t identify with a clean shaven 18 year old face or fake aging effects and horrible beard options. Just doesn’t work for me.

So I go for the next best thing. Sexy females. At least it looks nice. Just my preference.

If games made better male toon models I probably would play male toons as well. Alas…games don’t offer that.

I’m not a Charr IRL. It sometimes gets me in trouble too, because RL Charrs who play GW2 are often attracted to my avatar and get really creepy when I tell them that I’m not really a RL Charr.

Lets start with saying I’m male. Also, I enjoy looking at females characters more than male, but that is not why I chose a female character.

For me, choosing a male is simply boring. There are too many male protagonists in basically all types of video games that choosing a male in GW2 is too boring for me. It doesn’t help when there is no personality to our characters since its an MMO. The only way for me to want to pick a male would be is somehow they were unique or interesting in some way. An example would be Mass Effect. FemShep looked much better than BroShep, but I found BroShep more interesting (granted, there wasn’t too much difference between them), and therefore played as him instead.

So picking a female changes it up a bit, instead of the generic male hero beating up the baddies. Sure now its the generic female RPG character, but it still FEELS different enough. Maybe its because I play a lot of single player games that I feel this way.

Here’s a theory that I believe trumps all others:

The humans/Norn in this game simply do not look realistically human. They’re deep into the uncanny valley and they remind us of shop window mannequins.

Now, when it comes to the men, many of us find this weirdly unsettling – just enough so that something in us feels put off. But because Western culture is already overloaded with images of women photoshopped to look alien-skinned and dead-eyed, most of us are actually fully acclimatised to seeing women this way. Ergo, we don’t find it quite as off-putting.

Speaking for myself, I have two male characters and two females, but the males are Asura and Sylvari. I’m pretty sure the fact that they’re more obviously fantasy creations makes me more comfortable with them.

I also think it’s partly to do with the ability to flaunt individuality: give players the ability to make human/Norn characters right off the bat who have an array of scars, eyepatches, wild haircuts, prosthetic limbs and other clear identifying features and the ratio will change. At the moment, every single human and Norn male seems to be the same rigid, jowly looking Ken doll (humans) or steroid abuser (Norn).

First char: female asura. I liked the voice better. More pleasant to listen to for hours on end. Apart from that, female asura are as feminine as a doorknob.

Main char: male charr warrior. He’s a tough guy, he needs a rough voice. Though I like the fact that (give us six or none!) female charr are nothing like worgen females, I still prefer male charr.

Norn: Went for male. Male norn can be made to look more mature than male humans (aka “Ken”).

Sylvari: Played a female. The males all looked like children to me. I’m not a child. Female sylvari looks like your typical high-elf, too. OK by my.

Human: Last human I played was in BWE1 or BWE2, I think. Was a male. Looked like an immature prick. I liked the storyline, but then again, the race-specific part is over so fast. No, I neither want to play barbie nor ken anytime soon.

This discussion simply must come up in every single solitary game, and it will come up again and again in each game.

I’m not the least bit concerned who is male or female on the other side of a monitor because it doesn’t matter. I’m far more concerned why people even care.

Is the character doing what they are suppose to do? Yes? That’s the only thing that matters and if you think otherwise, you need to rethink your life.

Bad Element.4613:

Ill tell you what the REAL problem with this game is: People referring to a single creep as a mob. Mob is plural. Its a f___g plural word kitten

The term “mob” comes from MUD’s It’s short for MOBile object.

A “mob” of people is plural, yes, but a mobile object (the use of “mob” in this context) is singular.

Maybe people just enjoy playing the opposite gender? I was like that once, complaining about it but I mean, why does it bother you so much? It’s not like people are going to start flirting with each other. (I certainly hope not. o0)

I’m a female gamer and I usually play male characters. Why? Because male characters just feel more awesome than female, they usually have the cooler armor, better voice, better structure and of course I’m attracted to men so, why not?

I tried playing female, it didn’t work for me. I made a female norn, oh god the horror. I made a female human but I couldn’t stand that either. It just doesn’t work with me.

It works in a game like Mass Effect or Dragon Age but not in MMORPGs.

I wish there would be more female asura running around, man those asura are hot!

Here is my reasoning.

Male Human – Boring
Male Norn – To big/bulky Huge pvp target. Size makes it feel slow.
Female Norn – Attractive. Tall pvp target. Size makes it feel slow.
Asura – Cute and funny. Size makes armor and equipment nearly unidentifiable.
Sylvari – Plant people. Likely my second choice.
Charr – Ugly. Large pvp target.

Human female – Relatively small pvp target. Attractive. Attractive armor/equipment.

Shredicus.8706:

I swear every other player I see is a female human. I also know this game has an overwhelming majority of its playerbase being male. I’ve tried to ask in map chat a few times why so many gentlemen play female characters but I always seem to get really defensive replies or outright attacks calling me “gay” for looking at a male character’s butt all day (what?). Maybe I just have my priorities wrong but I dont think I could actually effectively play this game by staring at the posterior of my character.

But I digress. What is the allure of female humans characters and why are there so many males playing them?

Any question has an easy answer:
- because most human male models kittens badly.

majority of my female characters are played “in drag”

Sarisa.4731:

Bad Element.4613:

Ill tell you what the REAL problem with this game is: People referring to a single creep as a mob. Mob is plural. Its a f___g plural word kitten

The term “mob” comes from MUD’s It’s short for MOBile object.

A “mob” of people is plural, yes, but a mobile object (the use of “mob” in this context) is singular.

I…I actually didn’t know that! I just assumed it was a made-up slangy thing. See what crazy things you can learn on the internet?

As for human females, my main is a human female and so is one of my alts. In fact, all three of my alts are female. I don’t really know why, since in other games mine tend to be 50/50. It has nothing to do with my gender or sexual identity (even though I’m a woman.) I just kind of think it is awesome to have a butt-kicking lady running around and basically being a superhero, especially since most game marketing and writing tends to be geared towards men and male characters (though I admit this has been changing in the past few years.) But then I also like playing male characters for a change in perspective.

In this game, though, I don’t find the male characters to be as aesthetically pleasing as the women. It does bug me a lot that most of the human female magic-user outfits are over-the-top revealing to my tastes, but I love the medium armour on my thief, she looks kitten without looking underdressed and unnecessarily sexy. But besides the wardrobe issues, of all the races, I happen to find the human females most interesting to look at, followed closely by the Asura. And I like that the Norn female has a scarred face option. That’s pretty awesome because it transgresses “beauty” norms, and I am SO cool with that. It’s awesome to be able to play a female character in a video game who is NOT defined first as a sexual object.

And anyhow, it’s roleplaying. So if I want to make a short, hairy, bearded dwarf-man to run around in Dragon Age, then kitten it, I can. XD

I play a male in real life so I thought it would be fun to mix it up a little in a video game. Never knew it bothered some people so much.

irinawds.9627:

This discussion simply must come up in every single solitary game, and it will come up again and again in each game.

I’m not the least bit concerned who is male or female on the other side of a monitor because it doesn’t matter. I’m far more concerned why people even care.

Is the character doing what they are suppose to do? Yes? That’s the only thing that matters and if you think otherwise, you need to rethink your life.

THIS, a hundred times this. It worries me how many people make this an actual OMG LIFE OR DEATH issue People! We all have different parts, this is a video game, oh my god, deal with it!

a lot of people still believe in the old ‘boys need to play with cars and girls with dolls’ tale. For me it is pretty simple. I think that game designers usually spend more time on female designs then on male or are more motivated it seems, thus making better looking armor for female characters. I usually play both, depending on the game. In GW2 I created a female Norn and a human female of different profession just because I didn’t want to go through the same story line in the beginning. As was said here before me, the male designs don’t appeal to me, therefore choosing female….

all the games i play i am normally a male lead or character, with no custom options to change that (GTA, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Assassin’s Creed). roleplaying games allow me to explore the “other side” safely, while being socially/physically male in RL. i guess if i did not play games, i would probably be “dressing up” in public, which doesn’t have the same affect as being female in a roleplaying game.

i liked Tomb Raider because it featured an opposite gender lead character. male dominance in games is unusual, and should be more “balanced”.