I want to know if the breakdown by gender is based on character gender or actual player gender. But those charts were pretty interesting. Poor little squig herder.
This is actual player gender. Here is what was actually written.....
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Before I ran the chart, I’d have said that women are stereotypically perceived as playing support roles – the healer to her boyfriend’s tank, as it were. I’d also have said that women make class choices just as men do. The only area in which women actually do have a preference is in the gender of their avatar. Women rarely choose male avatars, whereas men will often choose a female avatar if only to watch shapely female buttocks for the extended periods of time typical of MMOs.
The latter is proven out by the chart – Witch Elf, a female avatar only class, has more women playing than men, but men are still represented. Chosen, a male avatar only class, does not have a statistically significant number of women playing it.
WAR’s marketing of the classes (and to be fair, hewing closely to the lore established by Games Workshop) was more gender-oriented than usual for an MMO. That seems to be playing out in the class selections. Certainly no one thinks “delicate feminine beauty” when they hear “Black Orc.”
The Sorceress, in GW lore, is a female only class, and although Mythic ultimately made it available to both male and female avatars, it is considered female by hardcore Warhammer fans. Also, the sorceress is the most smoking hot character in the game. And women do like to be pretty when they’re online!
Along the “pretty” lines, I’m told that the Archmage is the most lovely and delicate fantasy figure without the crazed sexuality of the sorceress, making it the top choice of traditionalists.
And it’s a healer. Maybe I was wrong about support classes being a stereotype – or maybe it’s a stereotype because it’s based in truth?
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