General Discussion

Ok what we are going to look at is a few stereotypes in MMO gaming. To highlight these i am going to quote a post and then a reply to it found here on MMORPG.com

Warning this will be offensive to people with PC sicks stuck where the light don't shine ,

LEAVE NOW SLOW FACED BABIES

A post in a WAR thread about grphix

 wihtgar

I think WAR is dead on in its thinking.  

Look here is the reality.  People play WoW because of the community in large part.  Take away the community and you get.... a niche market game.

Here's the deal if people can't play the game on something like a 700-900 dollar laptop, which blow out the door all day long in places like BestBuy or online at NewEgg.com, then guess what?? You just lost 40 million perspective customers and just reduced your gaming pool down to 2-3 million people who call themselves "gamers."    Once you redefine yourself as a game for hardcore "gamers" then you are basically going to be a 100k subscription game.  Which is why WAR chose not to follow that strategy.

Hey the older I get the less I'll spend on an expensive computer.  If I can't play it on my 800 dollar ACER laptop, I just play something else.  I think it's hillarious going to the AoC forum and listen to their advice on what graphics cards to upgrade too.  You realy think women and casual gamers are going to go out and buy a graphics card and install it, just to play AoC? Give me a break. 

Going for the high end market is like making a tv show that only runs in HD.   Good luck with that.

The reply

Originally posted by elvenangel

    So...I'm a female...a gamer...not married...I spent nearly 1500 dollars building my computer from scratch..and I just updated my graphics card..Oh and I plan to update the rest of it by the end of the year even though it really doesnt need it since it can already play Crysis (or atleast play it as well as possible considering it was shittily made).   

    So with all these generalizations of your either a geek or a housewife floating around do I land somewhere off the scale then?   I mean ... I know Im not the odd one out I actually know several of other female gamers that are into computers as much as I am.  Maybe we're not some overly hormonal vocal group like some posters here but we do exist and there's alot more of us than you think.

    Personally I hate wow...WoW looked like crap in closed and Open beta...and funnily looked really really good when it Launched.  But as they finally put the end gam etogether I realized it wasn't for me...I'd rather play EQ2 or DAoC any day over WoW and it has nothing to do with the ease of game play that people mistake for it being kiddie that I dislike WoW.

 

So now that we see the stereotypical statement in blue and the retort in greenish.

So now we have a question or stereotypes, Most Female mmo goers are (Oh and I am adding some because there are popular):

1) Under equipped, (Small E-peen), Weak system , etc.

2) Fugly, Ugly, nasty, old, etc.

3) Play with their husband or boyfriends

4) Fat, overweight, etc.

5) Dudes

6) Real females under the age of 5,000 , who looks nice (Transgender excluded).

Ok, now we have our possible stereotypical social constructs for female MMO'ers. So what is next. Well, In your experience ... let us know what you have seen.

 Poll at bottom

So now i am going to take off on this, because well, i want to.

In my experience Female MMo'ers are any combination of three of #1-5. Only two times in 10+ years of gaming (intronet[sic]-based) have i seen hot ladies play mmos. And one of them was my brothers girlfriend.  (Which does put her under Number 3, almost missed this fact).

This not to say that i have not played with quite a few female gamers, however, often they are just nasty, or not terribly awful looking, otherwise playing with their husband or boyfriend, etc. Apply a few of the stereotypes and bingo , that SEEMS about right.

In Elven's case she may be the gamer enthusiast she claims to be, as well a a total babe, however, that does not make the stereotype of , in general women don't play as many mmos /games and when they do they run smaller e-peens, and tend to be more fugly; any less true.

However, the same can be said about mmos and males and them being nerds or outcasts. I would also agree with this as i think the stereotype that more mmo players are not the "cool" kids, instead the less than cool kids; is indeed true. WoW may have changed this a small amount . The same is true about the ladies that play games , they are stereotyped (more so then males i do believe , however, both males and females are) as being more "Rough on the eyes". In-fact, i believe this is the perception of female gamers. (And to be honest in my exp. its rather true. Still i have seen a few ok lookers in wow, but its hard to find girls in wow and even more so in other mmos, so that may be the reason why). Also i think female gamers often tend to be older .

Because of this stereotypes, true or not, i have written this post to get a feel what others feel and while i would never EVER trust this post to be remotely scientifically accurate, it is still worth a shot.

One more question,
why even try to attack a statement that is more correct than in-correct , even more so when everyone knows it? What is there to gain, no one thinks there is absolutely no hot girls playing, just that they are like 1 in 100 and mmo'ers are 1 in 50 female leaving the odds in poor shape. (PS random ratios). So what is there to gain in attacking a statement i believe is accurate.

PS. (I don't have to add the word generally  in this post, however, if you did not listen to the warning at the top of this post then. 1) remove PC stick, or 2) $hutUP, suckup , and understand everything is a generality).

EDIT - Number 7 and 8 are wrong. They should read. Sorry for the trouble. No edit polls makes me sad face.

	7) Two-three of #1-5
	8) Four or Five of #1-5

Mabye they are rough on the eyes, mabye their not.  Hell, we as men don't judge eachother, but you could say that the men gamers are just as "rough on the eyes" to the women (excluding me of course).  Even so,  not all women who play have to be ugly.  I have played with several female gamers, on e of them being a close friend in game, and ugly or not, she is fun to play the game with.  I am guessing with the 1-3 rating, you are judging girls by 1 ugliest-3hottest?  Well looks aren't everything, and in this post you aure as hell look like you care about looks and only looks.  Don't get me wrong, I don't go around dating ugly girls, but it sounds like when you see an ugly girl you seem to treat them with a different respect level than if they were prettier.

Also, how do you know if the girls you were playing with are ugly?  Do you actually go around looking for girls, then asking them for a picture or something?

Hopefully we can get a girl on this thread

Mike how do i know... simple i play in guilds. You know those things right? Well the guilds i play in are organizaed and have web pages.  And they post their pic sooner or later ... why i'll never know.

Edit they did this back in like 1995ish playing a mud (text based game) even so ...  yeah if text based game players 10 years ago posted their pics. You can bet they do that at increasing rates today (as they do).

On a funny note,

Originally posted by elvenangel

*is tired of mmo game girl topics avoids it like the plague because it'll just fill up with idiots amongst all the decent folk worse than other topics*

Yet when ever anyone correctly generalizes women and gaming she has to drop her 2 cents. Im a women gamer and not like the rest. (paraphrased)  OK thats nice? Still the first poster was still correct.

Well maybe i am just a hater, but i am a hater that want o people to think a bit. I just want people to discuss valid issues when it comes to gender differences. So why this post simple, to clear this issue up. (Which it will fail at anyway but ehh no one can say i did not try.)

PS the #'s are the #. See the #1-9 on the poll.