Guild Wars 2

Hey,

So I was asked this by a friend today. We both PvP with our thieves and he saw that my thief was a girl and asked this question: “Why would you play a girl if you’re a dude?”. And I was not able to answer that because I truly have no idea

I only know that as a straight guy, 18 of my 36 characters in Guild Wars 2 are female and the other half male. As for why I am quite confused as well. So here’s to you who might have done the same thing. Why do we do that?

I prefer looking at and outfitting female character models.

To change things up, especially since there are only 2 voices for each race. You might also enjoy looking at your female toons butt XD. It’s a very subjective question. I use both male and female toons as well, and my reasoning is diversity :].

I don’t know why male players play female characters, aside from the general stereotypes that they do it to look at sexy bottoms all day.

But females play male characters to avoid harassment or special treatment.

Personally I wish for less gender segregation in the game. The Charr and Asura come close, but still force you into only one armor set. It would be nice if in the future MMOs would allow people to play more androgynous characters.

“If I have to stare at a backside for hours on end it may as well be a girl, right?”

Joking aside, I think the question is “why not”. In your case particularly, half and half sounds like a fair and faithful representation. I haven’t thought about it much, but my answer would probably espouse something along the lines of “variety and freedom”.

Edit: Okay. When I first heard this, bottoms weren’t really a thing. My bad.

Yeah, straight guy here. Also got a 50/50 mix in my characters as well.

When I roll alts, I’ve usually got a very specific character look in mind and I just go with that. This decision is sometimes influenced by which gender’s armour or outfits will work best with the look as well. Sometimes I switch things up when I get bored. E.g. I made a male Sylvari necro and later gave him a sex change because I liked the female light armours better. Purely cosmetic.

Sometimes when I’m goofing off in dungeons or PvP on one of my female alt I say stuff to people like ‘Oooh, love that hair girlfriend!’. Always a hoot.

I’ll be looking at that butt for the years to come.
Might as well be a nice one.

Welp, i suppose i count as a guy…though i guess i could also not depending on how you look at it…

Mainly, it lets me wear stuff that i cant wear IRL when i play my one human character. Dresses, skirts, etc!

Itsa trap!
sort of like with lb rangers around, then suddenly you are meleeing thin air and the mob is now wiping everyone from a distance as the blinds and stuns drop.
you roll a female to bend the rules, and humiliate a now dead foe your knee is in the neck thereof.
then giggle

Most of my human characters are female except for my duplicate thief which is male. Every so often i switch the gender of my mesmer as well.

The main reason i do this is because i find the animations better for most classes on female (except thief and mesmer where they are equal imo). I also like the variety in looks i can achieve on females, male outfits and armors are usually very similar.

Also im a big fan of the whole bad kitten female hero thing!

I like to play the human characters in GW2. I play female humans because okittenward animations and overall unrealistic bulkiness that the male humans possess. I would play males if they didn’t look like Garen.

I don’t get the “cause I like staring at female butts” thing. Imo that’s just creepy. You’re not playing the game to stare at butts, you’re playing this game to do dungeons, missions etc. And if that is your reason for playing as a girl, I don’t think this is the right game for you, there’s plenty out there I’m sure that can satisfy that need. Just my 3 cents.

Anyway. I always portray myself in every game. Skinny short male.

SecretWeaponCoffee.9583:

“If I have to stare at a backside for hours on end it may as well be a girl, right?”

Joking aside, I think the question is “why not”. In your case particularly, half and half sounds like a fair and faithful representation. I haven’t thought about it much, but my answer would probably espouse something along the lines of “variety and freedom”.

Edit: Okay. When I first heard this, bottoms weren’t really a thing. My bad.

Yep, the Francis Ottoman rule.

Anyways does it matter? It’s not like many of us go full RP. And it’s not like I feel unsure about my masculinity. My Ego isn’t that fragile.

So in the end it doesn’t matter but if you want to know.

I have a Human Thief, and when I thought thief my first thought was Parker on Leverage. Since she’s a woman, my thief’s female.

My Norn Mesmer was based on one of my old characters in CoH, an Illusionist. When I was creating the character in CoH their backstory was they were a Kitsune, a fox spirit or in their case half fox spirit The game at the time only allowed “cat” ears on females. So female. Illutionist in CoH created phantom beings to assist in the fight so Mesmer seemed the right pick in GW2.

My friend said he plays female characters on other games to get free stuff lol

Ferik.3127:

Hey,

So I was asked this by a friend today. We both PvP with our thieves and he saw that my thief was a girl and asked this question: “Why would you play a girl if you’re a dude?”. And I was not able to answer that because I truly have no idea

I only know that as a straight guy, 18 of my 36 characters in Guild Wars 2 are female and the other half male. As for why I am quite confused as well. So here’s to you who might have done the same thing. Why do we do that?

Same reason you make characters other than human. Just some diversity in your characters. I know women who play male characters too. For me it also depends on things like if I like the armor better on a male or female version of a race, animations they do (including /dance in Guild Wars 1, I usually decided female or male of a class based on /dance, you had to do female necro because of the Thriller Dance, male Paragon for the “Beat It” dance etc), and in GW2 and SWTOR in particular, I make choice based on which voice acting I like better, like I can’t play a male human in GW2 because I don’t like Nolan North’s performance (sorry Mr. North, it just doesn’t fit the characters I want to make!).

Ultimately I don’t find it weird at all if a person has characters of many races and both genders. Seems well balanced to me.

It’s weirder to me if a person only makes one race or one gender for all their characters, or weirder still, something like all their characters are female Asura when they’re a male irl. Even weirder if they’re all the same profession… knew one dude in LotRO who made all his character slots male Elf minstrels, all level capped, all looked almost the same too. I just didn’t get it.. maybe something actually pathological there.

Female characters are much more polished in my opinion and their outfits/armors and much better done that those of male characters. Before GW2 i used to play Tera and male characters were mostly left out when it came to outfits, everytime there was shop update it was more and more skins for females (not to mention gender locking last 2 new classes)

Personally, I am a #foreveralone who just likes hearing the female voices during the cut scenes.

That, and sometimes, the female armors look cooler than the male ones, and GW2 is all about the look man.

Because boobs…

I do it because it used to be a mnemonic of sorts to help me remember my fast character roster for something I been working on for years and since we have Canthans in GW 1 and 2, it just fit to have a Guild Wars universe version of my ti_tular (pun not intended) main female character, Yumiko Ishida (her maiden name is Morisada) in every game.

Since then I been known as this alter ego and have the rest of the cast as long as I have enough character slots or don’t get bored making alts.

Plus! Who doesn’t want a cute busty Asian girl with red hair?

I’m female and I play both male and female characters. For me it’s about what fits the character I’m making.

I’ll have a starting point in mind – a race, profession, story path, specific task I want to complete etc. (or a combination of them) and then I match everything else to it. A lot of this is done in my head before I even touch the character creator, but the time I’m actually making them certain options just seem like the obvious ‘right’ choice, although I’d have a hard time saying why particular genders seem to suit my characters better.

My husband has often claimed to be a proud proponent of the “if I have to stare at the back of a character for hundreds of hours I want them to be female” school of thought but he’s also a big fan of kick-kitten women* (one of the first things we found we had in common was a Buffy obsession). I think he likes the idea of someone the enemy are more likely to assume is harmless wiping them all out before they know what hit them.

*by which I mean kick-censored, not women who kick kittens. No one should like that.

Because the female animation with staff was cooler than the male counterpart. Really only reason.

I only have one female toon…rest are charr. :P

Same reason I make a charr or asura. role play.

Females look better and have better outfits.

Last time i really wanted to try a male was in AION .. created a Will Smith clone ..
but after seeing the running animation i deleted him after 20 seconds or so.

And also .. isn’t this game Barby Online ? Never heared somebody called it Ken Online

Always have, always will, even in single player, it’s just a preference, nothing more…though I did have one male character in the original GW.

Animations are generally better, and they have better fashion options.

heartless.6803:

Animations are generally better, and they have better fashion options.

Just look at real life .. for guy there are suits, then we have suits .. oh and if you are
a fashion fan you wear a suit.

For color there are at least the choice between black, grey and maybe dark blue o.O

Ultimately I’m creating characters, I’m not trying to recreate who I am in video game form. So for me its the same reason I create Norn or Sylvari or Char characters rather then sticking exclusively with humans. Every character I have, I created with a back story, personality and a particular look that I had imagined and tested beforehand. Out of eleven characters, six are male and five are female. I don’t think that’s particularly strange because none of my characters are representations of me, they’re characters I play, just like I might play Lara Croft or Mario in other games.

When I play RPG video games it’s a little bit different, because I find I become more emotionally invested when the main character is more representative of who I am and the choices I would make, although sometimes it is fun to play against type. Either way I don’t see the big deal

…I’m a charr in real life though. :O

/flips a table

Females look better and have better outfits. ( #2 )

Nuff said…

I always play my main character as male unless he looks gay(my main is always assassin).As for alt i always play female cause i think,magic suits more to girls then to guys and my alt is usually some sort of mage.Same as that,i always pick male for warrior and such.Have nothing to do with buts and boobs,this pervs above spamming about

So, do males who feel it is taboo to play a female toon also refuse to play games with women protagonists such as Tomb Raider? The whole thing is just silly; it’s just an avatar, not a sexual identity statement.

And, I agree, female characters are designed nicer than males 99.9% of the time in video games. There’s just something irresistible and kick@$$ about an armor-clad lady wielding a claymore

I’ll keep this short….I play a female character because I want to, and I play a male character because I want to. Sexual orientation and Gender identity have absolutely nothing to do with it.

Ferik.3127:

18 of my 36 characters in?

Dude, what the hell do you do with so many characters?

In any case, I have 9 characters myself, half of them being male and half of them being female.

I like to mix it up a little and I like the looks of some of the armors more on female than on male, hence I decided to make half of my characters female.

My males:
- human guardian (main)
- human warrior
- norn warrior
- human necromancer
- sylvari ranger

My females:
- norn guardian
- human thief
- human mesmer
- human elementalist

For me, most of the “heroes” and people I looked up to in my life were females. I think it just carried into my gaming life too. I like to see female and women as the heroes and winners.

heartless.6803:

Animations are generally better

This is one thing I disagree on.

I’ve rarely seen female characters in games properly animated. Either their animations are overly sexualized (Guild Wars 2 is guilty of this too) or the devs just copy-pasted the male animations on the female character’s rig, making her look weird and too masculine (this is particularly the case in Mass Effect among other games).

Loverboy.9417:

For me, most of the “heroes” and people I looked up to in my life were females.

May I ask who those female heroes are? Famous people or people you know in real life?

Because I have to shamefully admit that I don’t remember any noticeable female heroes in our human history. I don’t think there were that many to be honest. First and only one that comes to mind is Joan of Arc and truthfully she wasn’t really all that heroic.

Appeal, Better looking armor, maybe the X gene ,latent homophobia/or homosexuality ,I get off on it,I get along better with the gals,could be I just like seeing a female beat the crap out some dude that deserves it.Really makes no difference because I was under the impression that this wasn’t the place to pick up people.I do that the old fashion way..in bars.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

heartless.6803:

Animations are generally better

This is one thing I disagree on.

I’ve rarely seen female characters in games properly animated. Either their animations are overly sexualized (Guild Wars 2 is guilty of this too) or the devs just copy-pasted the male animations on the female character’s rig, making her look weird and too masculine (this is particularly the case in Mass Effect among other games).

To me it came from playing a lot of wow, where most male models just absolutely stink. I played a Female Human, because males looked stupid and had stupid animations. It carried over here when I made my guardian.

Ferik.3127:

Why do we do that?

I can only speculate, and use myself as an example. I’m a straight male and 90% of the time I have a gender choice in a game I choose female. I love the female form- and this isn’t about sexualizing pixels, it’s an aesthetic preference. I just don’t care about how any of the few male characters I make look and usually end up deleting them.

The male body is boring to me.

Let’s turn it around

Why is it expected that males should/would play males and females females? Why is this the accepted norm, and why does it usually end in a question about sexual orientation if the opposite happens?

Female running animation on sylvari vs male with and with out weapon out
female looks so much better it’s not even funny

+ i play what i want to

Easiest question I have ever had to answer. As a straight male, I like looking at women. Since my character is on the screen 100% of the time, it’s a no brainer.

I have 2 reasons
Reason 1: is because i like the armor
Reason 2: because the class suit a female better in my opinion (elementalist, theif, mesmer)

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Loverboy.9417:

For me, most of the “heroes” and people I looked up to in my life were females.

May I ask who those female heroes are? Famous people or people you know in real life?

Because I have to shamefully admit that I don’t remember any noticeable female heroes in our human history. I don’t think there were that many to be honest. First and only one that comes to mind is Joan of Arc and truthfully she wasn’t really all that heroic.

Real life mostly, and yeah women heroes are not a big thing in our history books but trust me, there is a lot more than just Joan of Arc.

sarasvatri.6871:

Let’s turn it around

Why is it expected that males should/would play males and females females? Why is this the accepted norm, and why does it usually end in a question about sexual orientation if the opposite happens?

I think that’s because the assumption, when given a choice in an avatar (unlike say Diablo II), that the player will see the avatar as a projection of themselves but probably idealized (thinner, stronger, taller, prettier … with hair). And that might be true if RPing was a priority. But since most people don’t actually RP as their avatar it really isn’t a RP breaking issue (if using voice chat).

If you played games for as long as some of us, we’ve played female characters since we didn’t have much of a choice. Samus, Laura Croft, the sorceress in Diablo II, the gender of the avatar you are “driving” is immaterial. So when given a choice is your avatar’s gender any different than skin or hair color. It’s just one of the few choices you have to customize your avatar’s look (I came from CoH so yes, few choices).

Is choosing race any odder than gender? Are you a furry because you like Charr? What about skin tone or hair color? Have you always secretly wanted to be blond or a redhead?

Coverage. If you only play male characters (or female characters) then you only get 1/2 of the armor skins you unlock. When the devs release some armor/outfits that look good on females (or males) and you don’t have a character to utilize them, you’re limiting yourself.

Besides, my Charr is kawaii desu?

Because I actually have a choice in-game.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

May I ask who those female heroes are? Famous people or people you know in real life?

Because I have to shamefully admit that I don’t remember any noticeable female heroes in our human history. I don’t think there were that many to be honest. First and only one that comes to mind is Joan of Arc and truthfully she wasn’t really all that heroic.

http://www.historynet.com/famous-women-in-history

That link has a fairly decent list, featuring some of the women I consider heroes. There are also the female figures from legends, such as Boudica, the Valkyries, and the Amazons. And then you have women such as Catherine of Aragon, Joanna of Flanders, Agustina de Aragon, etc.

Dumb forum bug is dumb.