Age of Conan Penalizes Female Characters

[PhoenixFlame]

While I daresay there might be a problem, I find it ridiculous that any real source was the AoC forums. They're unreliable - if you read all the posts you'll find every class is whining about their power, their gender being weaker, class y being overpowered, their main ability being bugged, etc. Personally when I tried a female character I found it attacked at the same rate...Ah well.

EA Mythic has taken a stance on this by not having official forums for WAR, something carried over from the DAoC days. While there are clear disadvantages, the signal-to-noise ratio and the sheer people power it takes to run such forums make it an unappealing endeavor, and articles like this which highlight forum posts seem to prove this.

I would argue that the issue isn't the fact that AoC has official forums, but that they are poorly moderated. Unproductive content is all over the place, and the stance is much like the WoW forums - sift through a ton of coal to find the diamond. The result is not a very good impression of community.

As for the problem at hand, to be honest, this is par for the course with MMOs. There's always some hitch or problem that is discovered and blown into a huge deal, and it's basically a 50-50 chance of it being the players' fault or the developers'. In this case, I haven't really played AoC that much so I couldn't know, but if there was a problem, hopefully it'll be fixed.

 

[Sigenrecht]

Really, it's logical because your Thinderella most definitely doesn't have the body mass capable of swinging a axe with twin blades the size of an adolescent fat kid at the same rate as one of the typical loincloth-wearing manchildren you see running around with biceps comparable to sacrificial calves. But, of course, when sex leaves you at a disadvantage, the sexism card is going to be thrown down because it is a game and, therefore, there are only certain aspects of realism you can apply to it. Let's all do the World of Warcraft thing and buff them, attributing it to magic before the feminists station themselves outside of Funcom's offices. Oh, wait; considering they're a pack of pillocks anyways, we might as well NOT.

 

[Drednought1]

If it isnt a bug I have to say it is a little more realistic that way, not meaning to be sexist or anything, but it does take into acount the generally lower upper body muscle strength of the female body compared to the higher muscle strenght of the male. Which would be reflected in the ability to swing larger weapons such as many of the weapons found in AoC.

 

[Bane07]

Im not playing the game anymore, but I remember my Female Stygian Herald of Xotli, I always noticed that he females attacked slower
Its a big slip up on Funcoms part, one of many that plagued the game, and I imagine still do.

 

[babyblues]

Oh teh noes, call the PC police!

Not that I think it's that much of a big deal, but this is a video game, an MMORPG of all things, so why are they worried about realism? Sure, men are typically stronger than women, but why worry about that in an MMO? The choice between male and female is usually aesthetic alone. I once asked a guy why he played all-female characters in Guild Wars, and he replied "If I'm gonna look at someone's ass while playing, it might as well be a female one."

I don't play the game and I don't really find this offensive in any way, but it does seem kinda strange to me.

 

[Badabinski]

But... Now Thinderella can't be free-spirited...

 

[poleboy]

Theoretically, I see no problem with this. Anyone who claims that gender has no impact on physical strength has obviously never heard of testosterone.

However... if I may be so bold to ignore the gender question here for a moment, I think it's a bad, bad move to cripple specific characters in an MMORPG because the player chose a certain look (gender) for his character. If the massive outcries of indignation every time slight changes are made to the classes in WoW are any sort of indicator, this could hurt the game a lot.

 

[Azhrarn-101]

What the OP forgot to add is that the damage between genders has now been normalised, DPS is now the same with the same gear but different genders.

Not entirely sure how, but I assume they simply boosted damage per swing on the females to increase DPS to be on par with the male characters.

 

[MisterDevil]

now this is fun
sexism in MMOs, it`s only natural that men>women.