Why Do Guys Play Female Characters?

[katz]

i'm female. most of my characters are female, but i do have 2 male characters. in both cases, they were chosen as male because 1. to be silly, and 2. awesome dances.

[cforce]

Have some of both genders, and several WF as well. MMO characters, for me, are more like "characters I watch in a movie" than "extensions of me". Some backstories are men, some are women. Asking "why would you play a female character", for me, is kind of like asking, "why would you see a movie with a female lead character"?

Or, perhaps more appropriately, it's like asking, "why would a guy ever play Tomb Raider"?

[Merlin-ator]

If I'm going to watch the bent-over backside of a stealthed Rogue, I'd rather it be female. It's not as though I play exclusively female toons, I have a 2/2 split. It was a 3/1, but I rerolled.

[licho]

Accident - they started as WF and havent notice the difference untill it was too late. Also as far as i remember you pick gender quite early in character creation and visualizacion late, some ppl are bery lazy and may not want go through Rogue skill distribution again.

Watch your behinds - do i need to explain?

Variety - just since they could

Esthetic - imho some races have bad male textures. For example Drow/Elf femine is somehow nicer, male elves look like they have hangover. From the other side Male Dwarf looks cool, while male woman not much.

Fit in - in fact DDO have very poor avatar customizacion, and one aspect of this is that all human melee look like lumberjacks, so if you are rolling some wizard/rogue character the only option for skiny body is a female.

Side note: Many players view the avatar as toy not part of themselves. So they would rather toy with it in various way, rather than making it as cool as they wish to be.

[Therrias]

Maybe most just assume all the players are guys unless proven otherwise.

This.

[DanteEnFuego]

I don't play female toons. My wife already gives me enough grief about "playing faeries" without creating a toon wearing a bikini with football shoulder pads. My only temptation it to do so to join one of those RP; Know How LFMs--my voice is somewhere between Barry White and Isaac Hayes. Wha do those LFMs mean anyway? Know how to play pretend? Seriously and not trolling, is there a wrong way to pretend?

[Talon_Moonshadow]

They are nicer to look at.

It's a fantasy game. I like the idea of a cute elf chic kicking butt.


But, I play both. My main is male. (and in my mind, the females are all his babes. )

For me, I have a Human male that is fantasy hero "me".

Then I have every other race and sex mix just to try everything out.

I do have a preference for female Elf alts.

I think after several character purges I do now have more female characters than males. Mostly Elves.

It is not me wanting to be a female, it is me wanting to watch a female.

DDO is not a Role Playing game.
although I do have some RP elements in my characters' designes and bios.
I would say it is more flavor than role playing.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Of course... one could ask: why play anything other than a Human? Since you are obviously not an Elf.

[GeneralDiomedes]

It seems every MMO player has to go through their 'isn't guys playing female toons kinda wierd?' phase.

[xenobias]

Too many responses for this lazy guy to read through so I'll just post this reply and hope I don't double up on something already posted.

For me it's all in the name.

When I create a new character my decision on the gender is based on the name I will use.

I always try to make a name that both sounds cool and sounds pretty real too and also can be pronounced which i find pretty important as well.

Unable to use a name more than once is really a nuisance.

But at the same time I don't go the route of '1234' or 'blagtorbasnam' or even 'eric1. eric2. eric3' those are sorta unimaginative.

Sometimes I make a character simply to use a name I suddenly came up with.

Whish - a female FVS

Xenobias - a male wizard (X=Z, like in xylophone)

Most of mine either have a last name or a place of origin

Jonton of Undergaurd - a male dwarf barbarian

Ellentine EverTree - female monk

Sometimes it doesn't work out so well tho.

Squeeker - a halfling rogue 1st life but to take advantage of better things his second life is as a half-elf rogue which doesn't fit his name too well. Every time I see it I think tiny halfling.

Obviously some of my names must be cool because I see them copied on other servers. I only use the Ghallanda server.

Male players have always used female characters, it just seems to be more pronounced on this game.

In the early days use of a female toon whether it was an online text based mud or a mmorph meant there was a possibility of getting help easier, free or nearly free stuff, and a slightly gentler social interaction from the uber geek male players.

I see that even on here a little bit whether the other players realize the toon creator is a male or not.

This is one reason a good female poker player can do so well. The men are too easy on her or try too hard to knock her off the table they make mistakes and lose all their cash.

Having a nice looking patootie to shake around a bit doesn't hurt either.

All of this flies out the window tho when the female is an abrasive, over weight, hawk nosed, hag type. This one is pretty much dead meat at that table.


Peace
Xeno

of special note-in the beginning...when d+d first began the rules gave female characters lesser strength, if I remember correctly their strength topped out at 16 but they got a higher charisma to compensate. Since we were always thinking about damage and loot capacity, we never ran one in the PnP version until the second set of core rules came out. Then D+D morphed into AD+D a whole new world opened up and off it took.

I still chuckle when I see a "back in the day" and that was the lead in for everquest or everquest 2..lol

My 'Back in the day' was when D+D was still being designed on Gary's kitchen table and the first text based mud was developed by two German guys who made the C based code from scratch-sheesh there wasn't even a way to colorize the text back then..had to wait for C++ rofl!

Man, those were the days. When you had to read and use your IMAGINATION to flesh out the world! :P

[Postumus]

I blame Tomb Raider for the widespread acceptance of men playing women avatars.

Now that everyone has played an avatar of the opposite gender in one video game or another, I do not think gender has much to do with the choice of male or female avatars. I certainly do not identify with the collection of pixels I am controlling regardless of the virtual gender.

I rolled a female Half orc because I thought it would be funny to have a character that looks like a WWF steroid 'babe,' and also sounded like a guy over voice.

I rolled up a female half elf because the males did not look any more masculine than the females.

Dwarves all look like they have a load in their diaper regardless of gender.

[Postumus]

Of course... one could ask: why play anything other than a Human? Since you are obviously not an Elf.

Because you are awesome in real life so you want to play a gimped race in game?

/jk :-)

[EddieB_TBC]

I build toons of both genders. Usually each begins with a build type and what I think is a good name. The combination of the two is what determines if it'll be a male or female toon. Possibly the single exception is the one half-orc toon I have that looks like someone I actually know IRL, couldn't help myself.

[Ungood]

I rolled up a female half elf because the males did not look any more masculine than the females.

This irks me to no end to be honest. I mean really, in DDO, the men are simply not masculine.

Would it kill them to redo the skins to at least give the male models muscle tone? I am supposed to be some heroic champion, do you think I could get a better body tone then "meh"

And while they are at it, give the Half-Orc babes some cannons on those arms as well. And the Half-Elves need a good set of abs (All of them) really.

[ZeebaNeighba]

From the other side Male Dwarf looks cool, while male woman not much.

Yep.

[sireric]

-Wanted to make a drow caster.
-Just got done reading the War of the Spider Queen series of forgotten realms books.
-Liked Gromph Baerne
-that name was taken so I added an "IA" to the end and made a female caster instead.

[Ilindith]

I am a male.

I only play one character, which is female.

Why? Because the first life of it was Warforged, and I did not pay attention.

If I could, I would change it for some races, and I wouldn't for others.

Why? Because I think male/female on some races are just so...ugly.

Also, I am not a creepy person that thinks they are their character, so I just pick whatever looks the best to me, in any game I play.

If I could change it on TR, this is what I would pick in DDO.

• Warforged: Male, because of the voice. Female voice just sounds weird on a robot.
• Dwarf: Male
• Elf: Female
• Drow: Female
• Human: Female
• Halfling: Female
• Half-Orc: Male
• Half-Elf: Female. They're still ugly, but less than male *shrug*

[Kalari]

I talk way to much over mic to play a dude plus male characters all look and smell funny to me. But I Have no issues with dudes who play chicks cause like someone said its not like its a pick up bar I love that about DDO I feel safe playing and not worrying about some guy trying to get his virtual mack on with me.

[bazooka99]

I seem to be like a lot of the other posters here. I like the variety, and I usually choose a gender based on which one I feel goes best with the build. For instance, I've made 2 sorcerers. The first I started as a fire savant, so I made her female to fit the sort of Chandra Nalaar archetype. The second was an earth savant, so I made him male, because a guy who can coat himself in stone and grab enemies with fingers of earth just feels like a masculine sort of character somehow.

I TRed the female into a half-orc barb (disappointed that I couldn't change gender), but as a semi-roleplayer, I kind of like the idea of a female barbarian more. Some of the more interesting characters are the ones that aren't archetypical. I like being able to say that I'm not just another WF arcane, just another half-orc male barbarian, just another human female cleric.

[NovaNZ]

Hello everyone! So, as you read, I've always wondered why do guys play female characters? I'm a girl and I build female toons always, i like it. During the time I've been playing (3 years now) I've heard men saying that they build female chars because the Drow look horrible, lol.

But would like to ask you, yeah, the men of DDO, why do you play female chars? Just for fun.

Thanks, see ya in game!!!

Well I got 50% chance of choosing the sex of an alt that someone else agrees with!

Only have dwarf alts so the variety is Huge

Freddie was on sumting when he penned "fat bottom girls make the rockin world go round"