I was listening to an episode of the World of Warcast podcast yesterday, (podcast review coming up on that one), where a female guest stated that she was the proud owner of 103 vanity pets. This illicited oohs and ahhs from the hosts.
“103 vanity pets?! Oh mys godz!!”
But lets be honest, this is just one of the many example of sterotyping and cliches that are the norm in this MMO for everyone. It might have 11 million odd players, but a lot of them act the same. Which is relatively similar to life as we know it. Lets start with the girls.

Female Players on WoW will for the most part play the game in the following way:

They will collect vanity pets and cooking recipies, whatever their age. Interestingly enough they won’t collect mounts in the same way that they collect pets. Is that because girls are more subtle? It could be. Or it could be because girls are more lazy. For the most part, mounts are just a little bit harder to get than pets. If you’re a full blooded male who wants to feel better about himself and his nerdy hobby by dragging his girlfriend into WoW, all you have to do is show her the vanity pet line. Top it off with fishing and cooking and your girlfriend is good to go! If you manage to do this during one of the annual holiday events then your partner will be trapped in the game for life.
Female WoW players either play healers, hunters or warlocks. They play healers because that’s what girls do. They heal. As opposed to icky boys who bash things and cause all the ills of the world. They play hunters and warlocks because, yes … you guessed it – they get a pet. Why do girls want pets so much? Beats me, but then again, why do they want babies so much …?

Males play WoW as you’d expect them to play WoW. With not much subtlety. But then again, male players, whatever their age will play any race/class/sex toon. That’s because we play the game so much we have 10 alts on either faction, so you end up having to play all combinations possible. There aren’t many male healers out there though. Which is a shame, as male healers will continue to heal you while getting their face ripped off. Female healers when attacked by any little bitty thing will stop healing you to heal themselves because, “…how can I heal you if I’m dead??” Obviously you can’t, but it’s all moot now as I’m dead. Males will collect just about anything in WoW but particularly mounts. I don’t know why this is so. You would think that little girls wanted the pony but apparently not. Is this freudism? And if Freud played WoW, what class would he be? What sex, come to that matter. He’d probably be a female orc warrior dressed in bondage gear.
For male players it is all about the gear. Having the best gear and having it first. As soon as the average male player gets a huge upgrade it is linked on guild chat. Then follows a slew of grats and other congradulations and salutations from the other male members of the guild. Girls don’t tend to do this as much. Now I think I know why the male peacocks have the amazing colour scheme going.

In WoW, people under the mental age of 18 wills talkz loikes ths. Wht ams I says? Lolz, stfu noobs hed. They will also invite you to their group and open a trade window without asking. They will camp your corpse, dance naked with their level 2 female night elf on top of mailboxes, and buy your stacks of herbs on the Auction House for full price on a friday. (By the way, herb is pronounced with the H, you morons.) They will ask if they can roll need on that plate in a PUG while playing a mage because they need it for their off spec. When you answer no, they will then press need.

Married couples who play WoW together are psychopaths. If you have them in your guild, be very afraid. If you have them in your raiding team then you are up shit creek without a paddle. Their dynamic will loosely follow this line. One of them will usually be the obvious psycho. They will cause trouble, quit the guild and come back more often than they change their diaper, and generally be the arch-example of a drama-queen. But the real psycho is the other half of the equation, the one that seems to be patiently putting up with their other halfs astoundingly bad behaviour. In real life behind the computer screen they are foaming at the mouth and doing weird stuff with their hands. (Speaking of this, I sometimes wonder how many of the people that I interact on WoW with are sitting at their computer naked. Then I quickly push that horrible thought to one side.)

People who play undead toons have real life issues. Or they just want you to stay away from them. People who you see quietly leveling their level 67 guildless mage through Outlands just want to be left alone. People who level through the Barrens or Stranglethorn Vale or Hillsbrad on a PvP server are masochists. People who have a blog about WoW are freaks of nature.

That’s all for a bit kiddies, I’m off on my honeymoon.

Adam.