General Discussion

I prefer male characters, like many others I like for my avatar to at least represent me on a gender level...if not more.

I have played a female character, however.  On WoW I decided to make a Troll because I thought the racials were neat.  I couldn't stand the way the male avatars looked though.  Females stood upright, and had absolutely amazing combat animations.  So, push come to shove, I will choose visual appeal over sex.  If they don't look great in combat, I've no time for em.  Gender has very little to do with that aspect.

Well it's a Role Playing Game after all.

Hi!

Personally, I play MMOGs in three different modes and character gender selection depends greatly from character purpose:

Solo.

I don’t care what game genre it is, for me it is RTS, my character is my unit and I am taking care of it. I am not impersonating or role playing anything, while soloing. I make these characters visually appealing for me. Depends on game, in CoX my Scrappers and Mastreminds are girls, however in WoW it was ork  male.

Teaming with strangers.

This is where role playing appears. Here I have concept for my char, and I try to stay within character. Hard to imagine myself role playing girl, so these are boys.

Teaming with real life friends.

This is me, no role playing at all. My character represents me, even visually if possible. So… boys.

My main character will always be a male, as for the plethora of alts that I never spend time on are usually female.

im a male and play bot sexes...it depends on the class and armour and wepons of the class if i go male or female :)

I usually play female characters. Then again I am transgendered, but I did play a male character in EQ2 (high elf), and the experience wasn't any different. A healer is a healer (He was a mystic and pretty good too, hehe I <3 damage wards...). If you know your role, no one complains.

-- Brede

The most of my characters are female but it usually depends on how the male characters look. In the most games the male figures look so damn stupid I do my best avoid them, but when the males look decent I usually mix a bit.

Ya know, there are so many threads about this or similar subjects.  The whole males playing females and females playing males.  I should begin by stating I mean no offense to the OP (or anyone else) by this, but really, who cares?  Why is it suddenly such a big deal who plays what, or why?  More curious to me is the motivation behind peoples wondering your true gender.  Games are not new.  Role playing is not new.  We can go back to the days or Super Mario Brothers.  Any female who played that game was *GASP OMG!* a female assuming the role of a male character in a driven storyline to resuc e princess.  Was that "weird" or offsetting to people?  No, not really.  You can follow that line of thought from the onset of video games up til more modern games including the likes of Final Fantasy series, or Resident Evil, where a male player MUST assume the role of a female toon and follow her character arc.  I already hear people making the argument that those are set storylines and not the same.  Whatever makes you feel better.  You still are within a character role, and actually have decisions to make as that character.  Long story short, it has been a staple of the gaming industry and "storyline" to play genders that do not always match your own.  I did not see people freaking out or thinking less of people for assuming any of the roles mentioned above, or others.  Instead, a group of GAMERS (Not Men/Women) would sit around and banter and exchange high scores and tips/tricks.  The same has been the case for most games into the MMO age.  Though I know it has been a minor issue, I have seen SOOO much of this particular topic and people who are "weirded out" by people playing a gender that is not aligned to their true gender.  Anyway... yeah.  Who cares who plays what?  I would rather see a conversation about why it matters, or why people take such issue with it rather than the redundant "OMG do you play a diff gender?!" threads.

I don't think a guy playing a girl character is that big of a deal  if they actually tell people they are a guy. Why it really bothers me I suppose is that when guys pretend to be girls and do not disclose that they are a guy. Being a girl myslef with other "girls " we talk about things that we do not believe should be discussed with males because they simply do not understand. Guys have no business spying on " girl talk " We talk about our cycles, female medications, childbirth and things males have no clue about. To make it worse alot of guys I have seen in games pretending to be girls do it soley in the thought that it will get them free stuff. The facts are that these days people are meeting others for real in games and you never know if the person you are talking to lives down the street from you. The world is alot smaller than people give it credit for. Those who think they are totally anonomous simply because they are at thier computer in their home are sadly mistaken. Those that misrepresent themselves and develop relationships with others under false pretenses are sick individuals indeed. Players are not pixels they are real people, just because you are communicating with them through a video game it is no different than if you were talking to them  on the phone or in person, they should be treated the same either way.

I play both as well. The real question or topic here should be along the lines of does it bother you to play a character of the opposite sex and why? now that would make for good discussion and might help some people learn to deal with being different.