Research on MMORPG players and their characters

[the doom cannon]

I first decide whether or not I intend to play the game for an extended period of time. If yes, then my first character is always male, usually on the skinnier side but not lanky, usually on the taller side as well, which is a bit difficult to achieve but hey, I'll admit I've spent an hour on a character creation screen before.

I choose my class based around the intention of solo play at first, so when I played wow for a few months I picked a hunter, and guild wars (original) I picked a necromancer. Once I either complete the story or am sufficiently progressed, I will make another character of a different race and generally female. This goes on and on til I fill up my allowable character slots.

I had 8 guild wars characters that specialized in different things and I used them all. Once I am sufficiently knowledgable about the game, I like to participate in group oriented play, usually in one of the more specialized roles. Specifically, I played monk or permatank in gw1, and played the specialized assassin roles for the assassin dungeon speedclears.

Edit: I just remembered a really freaking funny story from guild wars 1. So I made a female elementalist, if you don't know what the looked like you should google it. Anyway I was going around a noob area finishing up some missions on a different campaign than the one I started on, and I like to challenge myself so I wasn't wearing armor (read: not wearing the already scanty outfit, leaving me in what one could argue was lingerie). Anyway I joined a group just cuz, and when they saw my character they said they would give me 10k each for just playing without "armor" on. It was fun and they actually payed me. After the mission.

 

[mattaui]

I end up with a huge number of alts of all different races, classes and sexes, but they do tend to skew more female than male, even if my 'main' toons are almost always male.

Conversely, as a tabletop roleplayer, I almost never play a female character when I'm a player, though as the GM, of course, I end up running a huge variety of NPCs, female, male and otherwise.

For further differentiation, when I write I also write a large variety of characters, with both male and female protagonists and antagonists. So I'd say the more distance there is between me as a person and my characters, the more variety they have.

 

[TakeyB0y2]

I used to play on a roleplaying server in WoW. I made pretty much every character I ever made male (and I'm male). I did find myself projecting on to them; however, looking back I find that I made these characters to be actually realistically flawed and most of them carried over some kind of insecurity I had in real life. Also, pretty much every character I ever made was essentially "normal", and I mostly role-played them as civilians, with all instances, questing, PVP and other stuff considered "non-canon". I also had these characters pretty much entirely stray away from sexuality; not because I'm a prude or anything, but just because I didn't really find it relevant. I tried dabbling in ERP once, and... Oh god! The tears! The tears from my inability to stop laughing! They couldn't stop!

The server I was on had a very low population when I started, and it was wonderful how pretty much everyone knew everyone else. Buuut, eventually the server's reputation as being the "best RP server" got around and the population spiked. I stopped playing because 80% of everyone's characters were emo, dark, brooding, possessed vampires or whatever who were very inconsistent and just... Blegh.

 

[viranimus]

Just as a point, make sure to utilize the work of Nick Yee and the Daedalus project as you will find it has done a lot of initial work. Given that it was more at the genesis of MMOrpgs as a source, your work will help to offer up new research to also illustrate the evolution of the MMORPG demographics, which would most likely be the best factor to focus on. MMO adoption has practically a completely different demographic today than it had a decade ago if nothing else given the fact its comparing the very early adopters of an emerging genre vs those who have accepted based on far more widespread appeal that started with WoW and onward.

 

[Xarathox]

I always make characters of the opposite sex.

I have some innate animosity toward other men. I had no childhood heroes of either sex. I don't celebrate the virtues of other men. I don't want to be like anybody else. I don't have an ideal version of myself in mind that differs from me in reality. I don't want to inhabit my avatar. Admiration, emulation and self-insertion are OUT as motives for making a character.

So, I make characters that I'm attracted to. I clothe them as I want, and occasionally pan the camera around to appreciate them while idle.

Occasionally I communicate with others as my character, and pose as a woman. I have a female sibling who frequently stays here and has helped me with the ruse by communicating for me when prompted in ventrilo. This often allows me to extract things from male players.

For example, I hid from an invader in Dark Souls (not an MMO, but the freshest memory of this behaviour I have) and opened communication via GFWL. Long story short, I invited him into ventrilo, and my sibling spoke to him for a minute; he finished up handing over a +5 Lightning Axe and +10 Hollow Shield. Which I promptly killed him with.

The above being said, I usually don't communicate at all. It takes a prompt, like being invaded or invited to a raid or what-have-you. Then I decide on my persona based on what I think I can get, and whether or not my sibling is available.

Ah, the old "gimme free stuff" tactic. I always find it hilarious that people still try to pull it off these days... then I facepalm when someone actually falls for it.

Captcha: filthy rich. Emphasis on "filthy".

 

[LetalisK]

I've played quite a few MMOs, mostly WoW and GW2. I'm male and I almost always make males. The only time I made a female that I actually leveled far was when a chick I was seeing at the time wanted me to and I just went with it. It wasn't bad, got lots of free shit.

For race, I almost always go non-human if given the option. Humans just always seem so boring to me, the exception being if it's a human race with a very distinct culture, like GW2's Nords. I normally try to go with an "evil" looking race like orcs, undead, or charr, though never have them as evil in my mind. Despite this, I still have a few Night Elf characters. Probably due to them seeming like the best option when I was playing Alliance.

For class, I usually try to go with a non-magical ranged option. Hunter from WoW or Warrior with a rifle from GW2, for example. However, inevitably(except in the case of GW2 for obvious reasons), I end up rolling a tank class because I can't stand the stupid mother fuckers that insist on tanking in random groups, so I just take up that mantle myself. Also, if it means anything, my favorite class from any MMO so far is WoW's druid. Feral dr00d iz fer fite.

 

[Candidus]

Ah, the old "gimme free stuff" tactic. I always find it hilarious that people still try to pull it off these days... then I facepalm when someone actually falls for it.

Captcha: filthy rich. Emphasis on "filthy".

I think that undersells the artistry of the con. Although I don't deny that I'm absolutely filthy, ethically speaking. Heheheh.

Take the emotional initiative. Don't speak soberly, like an old hand who's undergone the social fatigue of people who know all the cons. Don't talk about or reference your sex/gender at all, duh. Mention any difficulties you're having infrequently and tangentially. Take the topic somewhere else YOURSELF in the same message, and allow them to come back to it if it's already in their mind to offer you some help.

Aren't I just talking about something you could do as an emphatically stated guy and achieve just the same? Well, no. I've been doing this on a consistent basis since Guild Wars- before it had a single expansion. I wouldn't call my experience anecdotal. I can say with some certainty that the difference between success and failure is in many cases whether or not the mark considers your name to be *possibly* indicating a girl or not.

If I do the above under the name Candid, I do not expect to be successful- to get items or money or help- anywhere near as often or in the same quantities as if I do it under the name "Xiappe" or "Oolet".

There's nothing explicit `female` about either of those names, but let's look at the last one, because this sort of attention to detail matters: avoid using "ette", which is obviously feminine, but make it phonetically the same. The reasoning being that, if the word ending "ette" creates the possibility in an old-hand's mind that this person is a female, that in itself will become a reason for doubt. But if the word plants the seed without committing this offense, it doesn't supply fuel for doubt at all. It's just `something that occurs to them`.

Anyway anyway. Yes. Splendid. Sorry for the tangent.

 

[Therumancer]

I'm conducting a research for my bachelor's degree in information science about MMORPG players and their characters. If you can spare the time, please visit the following link and answer this short questionnaire:

http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=87817d00-c503-452d-9130-4b0bb41809f0 [http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=87817d00-c503-452d-9130-4b0bb41809f0]

The topic of discussion: Why did you pick make the character(s) that you have? Why did you pick that gender/race/class? Why do you think others pick theirs?

I tend to mostly gravitate towards good aligned caster types, your regular mages and wizards, I prefer to avoid warlock and necromancer types thematically, but I will play them if it's the only kind of caster availible (such as in Age Of Conan). Gender/looks vary in my case, it depends largely on what I wind up liking in the game. I'm pretty co-ed with my character choices, and typically wind up with a number of differant male and female characters.

As a bit of change of pace for myself, I've found myself playing tanks quite a bit recently, both during my return to "The Old Republic" and in Defiance where I have been playing mostly as a Decoy user with largely durability perks.

Any way it goes, I wind up preferring ranged combat, especially in PVP, since I've never really been able to get my head around close range circle strafing and bunny hopping, and find exploiting bad collosion detection a little too counter intuitive to my tastes... as a result while I keep trying it, I've always had some serious troubles with close range combat, especially when it comes to PVP (as I said) and close range DPS/evasion mechanics.

 

[Xarathox]

Ah, the old "gimme free stuff" tactic. I always find it hilarious that people still try to pull it off these days... then I facepalm when someone actually falls for it.

Captcha: filthy rich. Emphasis on "filthy".

I think that undersells the artistry of the con. Although I don't deny that I'm absolutely filthy, ethically speaking. Heheheh.

Take the emotional initiative. Don't speak soberly, like an old hand who's undergone the social fatigue of people who know all the cons. Don't talk about or reference your sex/gender at all, duh. Mention any difficulties you're having infrequently and tangentially. Take the topic somewhere else YOURSELF in the same message, and allow them to come back to it if it's already in their mind to offer you some help.

Aren't I just talking about something you could do as an emphatically stated guy and achieve just the same? Well, no. I've been doing this on a consistent basis since Guild Wars- before it had a single expansion. I wouldn't call my experience anecdotal. I can say with some certainty that the difference between success and failure is in many cases whether or not the mark considers your name to be *possibly* indicating a girl or not.

If I do the above under the name Candid, I do not expect to be successful- to get items or money or help- anywhere near as often or in the same quantities as if I do it under the name "Xiappe" or "Oolet".

There's nothing explicit `female` about either of those names, but let's look at the last one, because this sort of attention to detail matters: avoid using "ette", which is obviously feminine, but make it phonetically the same. The reasoning being that, if the word ending "ette" creates the possibility in an old-hand's mind that this person is a female, that in itself will become a reason for doubt. But if the word plants the seed without committing this offense, it doesn't supply fuel for doubt at all. It's just `something that occurs to them`.

Anyway anyway. Yes. Splendid. Sorry for the tangent.

Ah, you're more of a subtle con, rather than the typical overt one. I like it. It's not very often you see someone put that much dedication into it. More often than not, it's easy to spot them when they're being all "girly", usually capitalizing on the male generated stereotype of how women "act".

 

[dogenzakaminion]

I found the survey to paint me as some weird sexual deviant because I always play female characters.

Can you be specific about what made you feel this way?

I don't think that you are a deviant. I tend to play female characters a lot myself. I might be sexually deviant but that's beside the point.

Well, I just felt that a lot of the questions were geared toward whether I play "as my character" i.e. female, or as myself. Like that round of questions was trying to catch me and go "Ha! You make yourself out to be a woman online so people would treat you different!" It doesn't say that, but that was the vibe I was getting.

There were no questions looking at WHY we play female or male characters, only how we behave when we do. Just my two cents

 

[2xDouble]

Here's a question: why do you assume people choose and play one and only one character? MMOs offer the unique and distinct ability to experience basically the same world as different facets of your own psyche (consciously or not). Unless the game deliberately discourages you from rolling alts, if you aren't trying the game from different "perspectives", you're missing a massive part of what makes an MMO fun.

Naturally, everyone has their "main", a character that embodies an aspect they identify with or would most like to explore. Oftentimes, that aspect is competitiveness and greedy exploitation as evidenced several times in this very thread. i.e. rolling something because the game balance determines that is "the best", or because you know that particular combination will net you additional reward. (regardless of the competitiveness in the actual game). Personally, I find that line of thinking distasteful.

 

[Karoshi]

Random trivia: Guys are three times more likely to pay you attention if you play a female elf, instead of a female zombie or female tauren.

My first and favourite character was a female Undead mage. Spiky violet hair, a constant smile on her lips and the bounciest animations ever. I loved her from the very beginning. Being a hard-to-catch zombie trickster mage and toying with you enemies on battlegrounds was the best thing ever.

Usually I always make my first character 1. female 2. a different race than human. The more unusual or exotic the race, the better. I hate looking like everybody else (wannabe hipster, yay) and therefore try going for the most interesting looking combos.

I never hid that I was a woman, but on my Undead mage nobody gave a damn whereas the night elves were a whole other story...

 

[Candidus]

Ah, you're more of a subtle con, rather than the typical overt one. I like it.

That's a good reaction, but suddenly I feel... is this shame? It's been a while. I'll eat something soon, just to make sure it isn't hunger. It's probably that.

I scrolled up to read about your character generation behaviour, but you spill no beans. If you're willing to talk about that, I'd also be quite interested to hear how and when you make judgements of the people's characters- assuming you pay the milling MMO crowds that sort of attention. Perhaps when you and just one or two others cross paths somewhere remote.

 

[SageRuffin]

That was a fair bit more difficult than I initially assumed (don't worry, I'm not blaming you). The few MMOs I do play I play for the RPG aspect, not so much the MMO aspect.

Years of experience in Xbox Live has taught me that interacting with others of my own volition seldom ends well.

 

[BrotherRool]

I tend to pick female characters in most things. It's different, guy characters are dime a dozen and MMO designs are often pretty macho.

I'm not sure if the poll really captured all my answers in everything. I tend to avoid other player interaction and I aim to roleplay but almost never end up doing it because no-one else does and if someone's busy asking you where you go to quest A or what country you come from, it's a bit dickish not to respond

 

[nomzy]

Well I played pretty much every class in WoW extensively except for shammys and DK's.
Gender just depended on the race or whatever I felt like at the time of creation.
As for role, well that depended on what I wanted to play at the time - I played on various different private servers after playing public servers so I experimented quite a lot.
So I might have played on one server playing as a healer or tank as my main for awhile then on a new server I might role a pure DPS as a main.
Although what tended to happen was I would get bored of my main and role a new char and then not touch the main again unless that role was needed for a raid or something.
When I started playing SW:TOR I rolled a healer (male) and it seems to be what I prefer to play in MMO's. At least the hotkey type ones.
I also had Jedi guardian(female) specced for DPS that I had for PVP.

So yeah the class I play usually comes down to what role I feel like playing at the time and I pretty much always stick to it for quite a few months. I don't put much thought into gender it just depends on the time of day I guess.

As for why other people choose what they do? There's so many different reason I couldn't list them all. Some people want to be unique, some a min/maxers etc.

As a side note may favourite character ever was probably my sage on SW:TOR. People seem tend to be nice to good healers and it's fun to get a random whisper from someone you grouped up with 5 days ago asking you heal for them

 

[Doom972]

Here's a question: why do you assume people choose and play one and only one character? MMOs offer the unique and distinct ability to experience basically the same world as different facets of your own psyche (consciously or not). Unless the game deliberately discourages you from rolling alts, if you aren't trying the game from different "perspectives", you're missing a massive part of what makes an MMO fun.

I assumed the opposite, that's why it says on the first page that the questions refer to your "main character", and that if you don't have one, refer to it as the character you play the most. I played some MMOs myself and I had several characters in them because I wanted to see more of what the game had to offer.

 

[MHR]

I sort of *want* to make female characters cuz I like looking at sexy, but I find that silly, so I always make male characters which is the gender I am.

I tend to want to talk to girls more than guys in general, even if I try to disregard a persons gender when gaming with them. So, It mildly annoys me when people just pick whatever gender. That's also partly why I don't pick females so as to not misrepresent myself.

 

[Savagezion]

I just make character I think is cool or interesting. My main in GW2 is a black anime style Asura that is very goblin-esque in appearance. My other are a female Asura, a female charr, and an old man Norn. In GW1, my main was a black dude I modeled after Wesley snipes in Demolition Man. In AO, It was a goth style necro basically and a red Mohawk sporting trader. In CoH my main was a female cyborg. My characters are very diverse or I would lose interest. When making a main, I always keep to what I think would be "cool" at the time and for the class.

 

[MadBlueWinnie]

When I was younger, I would always make an idealised version of myself. A Male Human, with the best looks (although that wasn't always possible back then with the graphical quality), and with qualities and skills that I myself wanted, etc etc.

However when I grew into my young adult years, I began to use games as a more of an escapism and fantasy, rather than for idealism and empowerment.

I make characters usually biased more toward Female, but gender is not the main focus. The focus is making a completely unique character and living in their shoes and mind, almost to the point of role playing (although I do not role play in strict MMO sense). I will ALWAYS pick a strange or foreign species if available, for example in Guild Wars 2, I play a female Azura and a male Charr, with a male Sylvari side character.

The reason for making these choices in Gender, Species and Skills is that I don't want to be me in a game. I'm me in real life everyday, games are where I can be someone or something else.



As a side note, I do not use any of my female characters to extort RL males. This practice, to me at least, feels wrong and dishonest.