The Women in WoW
February 23, 2006 by Ingrid Diaz
Filed under Gaming
Came across a fascinating blog entry that features comments from female gamers in WoW. The source of the comments comes from a survey that the author of this post held at an all-women’s WoW LJ community.
The topic of the comments range from general opinions on gender in-game, to harrassment, to feminism and oppression.
Here are some examples:
I am disappointed that Blizzard is very shallow and predictable with the design of the female characters. It’s all of the character choices really. If they really want people to be able to customize how their character looks, they need to offer more choices besides superhero and barbie.
If I go “Away from keyboard” my character sits in a kneeling position. I have often come back to find male characters with their crotches in my character’s face making blowjob comments to their friends or other passers-by. That is the most frequent occurance.
Yes, I have. There was one instance a group invited me to quest with them. I was en route to join them and had to travel through an area full of high level mobs. I died on numerous occasions and was told by my group that the ’stupid girl’ better ‘hurry up’ because I was ‘too slow’ and ‘didn’t know what to do’. One of the other members of the group happened to be the same level as me and was male. The group never made one negative comment about him.
In-game, while playing female characters, I’ve received comments that in real life could be construed as sexual harrassment. To paraphrase one male character, “Hey baby, can I lift up your skirt and do you?”
It seems to be easier to get help from the male players as a woman. If someone assumes I’m a guy, I sometimes don’t tell that I am a woman so that I will be treated as an equal. I’ve seen guys pretend to be women to get help from other male players. Not all players treat you differently when they know you’re female, but there’s just enough out there to make it annoying to me.
There are many, many, many more, and I encourage everyone to go over and read them because it’s a fascinating look at the female gamer experience in MMORPGs.
As a female gamer who loves WoW and MMOs, I can relate to many of these stories. For the most part, when I play, I tend to play with people I already know, because I’ve found that too many people end up pissing me off and it’s hard to strangle someone virtually (probably a good thing, too).
I spent some time on the WoW forums during the whole “GLBT Guild” upheaval just to see what people were saying, and some of the most common comments I found on the boards were “it’s just a game” or “leave real life out of it, it’s just fantasy” or “you’re just doing this for attention.” I grew very annoyed by all of these inane comments.
It’s very easy to say things like that when you’re not the ones being harrassed or the ones being alienated in what you want to think is “just a game.” Many people play games so they can get away from “real life” but when this fantasy that is supposed to be fun starts sounding so much like what you’re trying to get away from in the first place, it’s hard to ignore. 
Why would women want to be part of an all women’s guild? And why would gay people want to be part of a gay-friendly guild? Is it to call attention to themselves and to the fact that they’re female and/or gay? I don’t think so.
If anything, they’re doing it to make it less of an issue. It’s because they’re tired of being surrounded by people that are ruining their game play experience, by hitting on them, or saying ‘that’s so gai’ after every little thing. When you’re in-game, you don’t want to be distracted by the fact that your fellow party member is being an asshole. You want to just play the damn game.
Anyway, go read the post, for it is interesting and not all negative like this post may lead you to believe. :)
I’ll close with this quote, cause I like it:
It’s absolutely amazing to see so many women play World of Warcraft, and it’s just as amazing to see how many men are still sexist assholes in-game. (”LOLZ WOMEN DON’T EXIST ON THE INTERNET,” and “I don’t group with women because they don’t play the game well,” anyone?) When those boys can beat me in HKs, fewest deaths, and killing blows in a single Arathi Basin or Warsong Gulch game, then maybe I’ll start to believe them.
That’s really sad. I think you and I have seen occurances of that when we used to play WoW together and while I was never deragatory towards women, I will admit to being slightly more helpful when I saw a female character. Which I guess is bad in it’s own way. Another reason why I tend to solo and not group with anyone when I play these types of games. I immediately hate everyone equally.
Well I remember quite a few girls or “girls” who were appreciative of your help. And I certainly was thankful a lot. As we both know I had a horrible sense of direction in WoW ;)
I think the issue is more the ones who are insulting and just plain rude. I know we both don’t agree on some things but you’ve always been respectful, and I have always respected you for that. There’s other people who are just plain cruel or rude or disgusting. And they are the ones that become an issue.
When you are a gal (either ur pic, name, watever), you can get more feedback and help on Xbox Live too.
Guys…(Oops, I’m one of them)
Sad to see that happening in this day and age. You would think this sort of thing would have died out by now as there is so much info out there about harassment.
However each generation of pre-pubescent and teenage boys seem to have to go through the same thing where they think it’s cool to act in a derogatory (and often insulting) manner towards women.
I really hope we can look back in 10 to 15 years (don’t expect miracles in the short term) and marvel that we were able to eradicate this sort of behaviour.
I feel the problem is with the lack of character customisation in general in World of Warcraft, rather than a problem specific to women. Most of the male races are musclebound bodybuilders.
I’d love to make a fat biker Paladin. :)
Let’s see, now I’ve written a whole story about how great it is with girls online on that other site where all the comments were posted, so I guess I’ll defend us guys a bit here then. :) The thing is (In my opinion atleast) that most guys, at least on my server, are good guys. They help out women a bit extra, perhaps, but other than that treat them about the same as male players. That might be because Argent Dawn has an extremely good player enviorment, server RP etc, and the fact that we are an RP server and not a PvP server *cough*, but it’s still how it is. To take an example, in my raid community our MainTank for all the end-game instances are a female gnome, and our leader is a female elf, and the announcer on the forums are also a female elf, all RL females. We actually just have 2 men in the high positions *ponders* anyway, they’re doing a great job, and nobody’s ever said different, as far as I know :)
Hmm. It’s heartening to hear that some females (gamers! who play WoW!) understand–maybe even appreciate–the ways in which males interact with females and other males. If you don’t, learn2play.
Yeah, some male gamers are cruel / rude / disgusting / creepy beyond the norm. Or seem to be. My experience was that the behavior of many junior high and high school age kids of both genders could be described by one or more of those adjectives. Ugh. I could explain further but [Transmute: Thoughts to Writing] often makes me tired.
Heh heh… and Cal, it’s amusing to me when people think that gender traits can be broken or removed through any outside force short of genetic engineering. Not to say that it hasn’t been tried: why do you think boys grow up to be Guys these days, instead of Men?
I think its nice having girls playing games, but no more than I think its nice to have guys playing games. By celebrating girls playing games, instead of welcoming them with open arms, you’re still pointing them out and seperating them from the whole. Personally, I would like to celebrate people who go out of their way to be nice, friendly, or achieves great things, regardless of sex or race.
Unfortunately the sexism is only one part of the problem. I don’t think I have ever seen so many Sexist-racist-anti-gay-biggots as I do in WoW general chat. I have seen all sorts of sexist comments, comments calling people gay or against gays, racist comments. I’ve even heard someone say we didn’t bomb Hiroshima hard enough.
I really don’t think the lack of extensive character modification is a factor in the problem. I’ve seen the same behavior in Ultima Online in which pretty much every one not only looks the same, but they look like normal people. I see the same behavior on forums where there are no UI models. My wife sees the same behavior on a writers forum. How sad is that, when a bunch of supposedly educated and liberal people are making some of the most insane racist/sexist comments? A good portion of whom are women.
People feel safe when they don’t have to face someone in person. Men are probably more likely to be sexist since they don’t have to deal with it in real life. Of course when you’re a guy, you often have to grow up dealing with everyone from fathers, teachers, coaches, and even mothers telling them to stop acting like a girl or gay, and start acting like a man.
We live in a world where from birth you are fed mixed messages, discrimination, hate, and we’ve now introduced anonymous public interaction where everyone can act out on everything and everyone without having to worry about a punch to the face.
Hey Tor, some of my most vile treatment was at the hands of hardcore RPers in Neverwinter Nights. “Men are better RPers than women,” was oft thrown around on the forums. I had a few men befriend me, only to objectify me or my characters and say they were ‘just messing around’ when I called them on it. Some would threaten me with rape and murder when I rejected their unwanted advances. All of them treated me differently in some way or another.
Sexism is sexism and it knows no bounds.
Ouch Kat, I’m sorry to hear that *blinks in confusion* What server on NWN did you play on for that to occur on? I was GM at TTM and briefly on Immersia, and I -never- saw any of that, but then again if it mostly happened at the forums I never payed any attention there.. I think maybe it’s all about what people you’re so (un)lucky to end up with. Just like RL there’s good people and bad people, and people seem to focus more on the bad ones than the others *thinks* I do see it a bit more often on WoW though… *doesn’t really have any good comments*
Great comment, PodMonkey. You’ve got it. There aren’t as big of consequences for acting into the gender roles we’ve been taught since birth.
Sparafucile: Gender is a social category assigned based on biological sex, not something people are essentially born with.
Sorry Tor, I didn’t mean to give the impression it was all bad, because obviously I would’ve stopped playing if that was the case. But there was plenty of bad mixed in with the good and I soon learned to avoid the bad if I wanted to just enjoy the bloody game like everyone else. Sticking to female-dominated groups and playing male characters helped a lot.
I wasn’t on either of the servers you mentioned, and yes, the absolute worst was on the official forums, that bastion of intellectualism that it is. The snide, condescending stuff about women being inferior RPers happened on a hardcore RP server, where I had thought they’d be a little smarter than that.
Positive point: my weariness with jackholes in multiplayer NWN led me to discover the greatness that is Morrowind. :)
*laughs* Right’o, I’m glad you’re able to look beyond the idiots and enjoy the games :) Even though it’s Morrowind *coughs* :P
Hey! :P
hi my name isnt gentle i just dont hand out my real name umm i have a wow character named vontan and shes a nightelf plays on darkspear realm