Are guys more likely to pick Monster races than girls?

[Beloren]

My own anecdotal findings of woman that i've played with online are towards monster races:

5 Trolls (hunter/2xdruid/priest/shaman)
2 Blood elfs (paladin/rogue)
2 Taurens (paladin/druid)
1 Forsaken (rogue)

The Forsaken and 1 of the trolls date back to vanilla, so they don't really count, since there wasn't a non monster race horde side. One of the blood elves dates back from BC, which was the only way to play a paladin horde side back then so I'm not sure if that counts either. These are generally older players (30+) in Europe.

Hardcore guild? Racials could be the thing if hardcore - i see 5 trolls on classes their racials are really the best compared to the other options.. so that might explain it

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This is a bit of a bias, I think.

I never came with twig and berries, so I'll offer my non-male viewpoint on what I pick and monstrous races:

First point -- I'm going to look at female models to see if I find one that I can relate to since I don't see stylized pixels on a screen in a sexual fashion.

Orc (all flavors) -- female = weirdly colored human (thus boring); male = Have you seen the Twilight Zone madness that is shoulder pieces on orc shoulders??!!

Troll (standard) -- female = weirdly colored human (thus boring); male = I can't handle the horrendously bad posture. Makes it hard to see transmog.

Troll (Zandalari) -- female = Blizzard, did you seriously copy-paste the standard troll female? Really? You couldn't have given them bigger tusks or something?; male = Okay, I'll consider playing these guys. Big tusks, nice posture, can do transmog. Honorable mention: Druids, fuck yeah, dinomancers. Gimme that shit. I'll go for paladins too.

Tauren -- female = OMG, moomoo cows are really adorable! I'd take one as a character.; Male = I could probably go with it for some classes, but they kind of unrealistically big and dopey.

Highmountain tauren -- See Tauren.

Belves -- female = Perpetual PMS face. Still makes for a scarier character than a male.; Male = I can't take one of these guys seriously. They look like they do superficial stuff like worry about hair care all the time.

Nightborne -- ALL = they're Horde night elves with the same face for each gender. I have one for the mailbox racial on a character that uses the mailbox a lot. Not because of aesthetics, but because of the racial.

Pandaren -- Female = Adorable. I have one of these as a monk; Male -- If the females weren't so cute, I'd probably have one of these guys as my monk instead.

Vulpera -- Female = Ears are too small, but nice selection of styles; Male -- already have a bunch of these, and I race-changed my main into one.

Goblin -- All = ugly af, and I don't care for the racial culture.

Undead -- Female = terrible fly-swatting dance; Male = awesome dance. Had some of these at one point, but I like other races better.

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Human -- All = BORING

Night elf -- ALSO BORING

Void Elf -- Don't know, haven't played Alliance recently enough for this one, but probably also boring.

Draenai -- Female = Glad they're getting tail customization. Felt so cheated with those stupid short tails back when I played one; male = same shoulder problem as orc males. Tail envy.

Lightbound Draenai = see Draenai

Gnomes -- ALL = Good for punting. Thought so even playing as Alliance. Too short. At least Vulpera can be seen with the tail and ears.

Mecha-gnomes -- All = Can you even see the mechanical arms? See gnomes.

Worgen -- Female = need to be bigger, snarlier, wolfier. I wanted werewolves, dammit, not were-chihuahuas. That being said, I had a bunch of these; Male = PERFECT. I started to convert my roster to these when all my friends went Horde. Now I'm sad.


Honorable mention:

Sethrak. If Horde had gotten these as a race, I'd have a zillion sneks for characters by now. Other desirable races: Arrakoa (the proud flappy birds, not the crippled outcasts), saurok, and saberon. Anything that looks too human is kind of boring to me.

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I beg to differ. Wow follows that trope just fiiinnneee. Troll and orc females look just like off-color humans with slightly pointier teeth, to be honest.

Very interesting insight, thanks for sharing. I did rofl at the chihuahuas reference to worgen females. What you like so much about the Sethrak - i know they've been fairly popularly requested. I wonder if blizzard thought of given the alliance the Sethrak instead of the mechagnomes.

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There's nothing wrong with enjoying the way your character looks, as long as you don't take it up to a creepy level.

Event hat's okay with me, play how you want right? Although I don't see how you culd take it to creepy levels, it is clearly fiction.

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Definitely seems that way from my experience. I didn't meet many females on Horde that didn't play a blood elf. Alliance didn't even get a "monster" race until cataclysm. Worgen can still change into a human even then. I would say the 2nd most common Horde race for females I knew would be undead, which are basically human still.

Yeh, and most of the monster races seem to come from hardcore chicks, as orcs and especially trolls have very good racials. But it's nice to see some gals on here like monster gals, albeit it feels rare.

[insert random number]

Hardcore guild? Racials could be the thing if hardcore - i see 5 trolls on classes their racials are really the best compared to the other options.. so that might explain it

Not hardcore enough to min/max racials.

[cocomen2]

you said "Monster races" but in wow ... we can play only variations of Humans (all act as Humans.... no fantasy at all , muh Honor muh Genocide) :

1) Humans with ear problems -> Elfs,Trolls,Goblins

2) Humans with skin problems -> Orcs,Undeads

3) Humans+mammal , in fact just Beastmen -> Human+Cows,Wolf,Fox,Panda DNA


So lets wait for real Monster races.. heh , to call out them as "MONSTERS"

Human+plant, Human+Bird,Human+Lizard,Human+Sneak,Human+Fish,Human+Insect DNA.

[SirCowdog]

Event hat's okay with me, play how you want right? Although I don't see how you culd take it to creepy levels, it is clearly fiction.

That's the thing tho. There are people who don't really understand the line between fiction and reality very well. Whether due to lack of experience, or actual mental disorder. This has historically lead to some pretty weird outcomes at the very extreme. There was a case in Japan where a guy wanted to legally marry a fictional character from a manga.

People can RP however they want. Go hang out in goldshire and get your Cyber on. Just don't take it up to a level where you start referring to your WoW character as your real girlfriend or something.

People do that....probably not often. But it happens. That's what I meant by taking it up to a creepy level.

[Ryzek]

I'm male and pretty much only play females, does not matter the race I will gravitate toward female characters.

[Scrysis]

Very interesting insight, thanks for sharing. I did rofl at the chihuahuas reference to worgen females. What you like so much about the Sethrak - i know they've been fairly popularly requested. I wonder if blizzard thought of given the alliance the Sethrak instead of the mechagnomes.

Not a problem. There are a bunch of in-game story and logistics issues with making Sethrak Alliance (greater Horde involvement, close relationship with both Zandalari & Vulpera, sharing the same continent, etc. . .). That being said, I do feel that Alliance got shafted with mechagnomes. I personally think that Alliance should have gotten Jinyu or Ankoan. I suspect what happened is that Blizzard counted on Vulpera being popular, and so designed them with being a player race in mind, and were completely taken unaware by how much of the playerbase wanted Sethrak. In a "if I could make design decisions back then" kind of way, I'd go back in time, make Vulpera & Sethrak Horde, and I'd make Ankoan & Drust-cursed Alliance. I mean, if I understand some of the Alliance story correctly, those Drust golems controlled by the witches are powered and animated by human souls. So what happens to them when the controling relic is destroyed? BAM! Player race. Maybe Blizzard will figure out that players want allied races that feel different and distinct from the races we currently have.

[Grimbold21]

Why does it matter

[Pendragon]

People who play anything other than their own species and gender are creepy af. Also anyone who isn't a warrior, hunter or rogue, is some weird Harry Potter wanabe.

Am I doing it right?

No, but nice try. Cope more.

[Natta Lmo]

It could just be my experience, but the majority of players that play Orcs, Trolls, Tauren and desire to play races like Naga are male (surprising seeing how female centric the Naga are).

Most of the girls I've met in warcraft either play Elves (vast majority blood and void elves, but also Night and Draenei females ), seen a much larger number play Vulpera too - but not your Orc, troll, worgen kind, and nearly all the requests for naga are from males.


Do you find this the case? And why do you think?

all my classes that can be troll are troll on horde...

[Magnagarde]

It doesn't matter and it is individual. Sure, some form of statistical conlcusion could be made if we had all the numbers figured out, but individual preference comes before any sort of collective preference that can be concluded as a result of the former.

[Swnem]

Probably. Given they tend to like cute things.
But, theres obviously exceptions. The most active female player i know plays a worgen female and a female draenei priest.
It really is hard to say.

I myself tend to like the more human races too. Humans, kultirans, dwarves, gnomes, void elves, blood elves. But, i also like goblin. I think it has to do with stature, animations and how gear looks on them.

[Eninya]

I used to have a female guildie/friend that exclusively played male characters. It's like a 60/40 split on my current guild in Classic (comprised largely of people I've known and played with since Vanilla/WotLK) for males playing female/male. There might be a preference, but you also have to consider that this game has such a diverse variety compared to other MMOs.

Personally, I would eat a shoe to get Naga sirens (or at the least, sea witches) to be playable. I've played Human, Undead, Orc, Night Elf, and Draenei. It just depends on the aesthetic and transmog options versus the class. I like Night Elves for Alliance because they're symmetrical, where human females had absurdly large weapons for years. I chose Undead (female) because of their flip when I changed to Horde while playing Gladiator in WoD. Orc was when undead racials were trash, and I transferred servers and wanted to be even more min/max for Mythic raiding. They transmog very well, but nothing compared to Night Elves for armor balance.

I want Naga sirens just because I think they'd look cool and be pretty creative compared to other races so far.

[Unclekreepy]

My wife tells me the story of watching the Vanilla cinematic and seeing the Night elf Druid and she wanted to be that so bad and when she gets in game her brothers played Horde and she was bummed she had to be a Tauren because they are so "ugly" .. she ended up loving it and hates the Alliance like she should.

[Skayth]

I prefer draenai, but i have an alt of all races, cept human, dwarf, gnome, and mechagnome. Cause fuck those races.

Im forced to play night elf and blood elf for my 2 demon hunters, and while i love worgen warlocks, i want it to be draenai.

Sooo, i prefer the monster races as a female.

[PenguinChan]

Honestly it all depends on the design of such races. Both men and women enjoy bestial, fierce races - as much as they enjoy lithe, subdued races. I honestly have no clue who is what anymore because there are too many races to really get a gauge on what kind of people play them. The internet has broadened a lot of peoples tastes and MMORPGs over the years have exposed a lot of people to these things.

Maybe back when the MMORPG genre first got popular it would be easier to say - but now? I see a lot of men play girly races, and a lot of women playing the handsome races. Makes sense, I guess - but the opposite is also true quite often. As for beast races? Mixed bag. Personally I see more men playing the burly furry characters, and women playing the cutesy variants.

[Nuggsy]

As a Horde fan it saddens me to know that the majority of the faction that was originally comprised of the "Savage" races is dominated by elves. People want to play as barbie dolls so they generally play the token pretty race H-side because that's where most serious players tend to be. Oh well. I'm hoping the new cosmetics in Shadowlands helps balance this out but it's unlikely seeing barbie and ken are getting new features as well.

[Lionwoman]

Female player here. This will be all about my opinion and experiences.
I am personally sick of all "female human mmo races" (You know what I am talking about). Started to play WoW as a female tauren because anywhere else "could be a female minotaur" (aka beastlike race). I also have a male worgen for that fact. (Also I dislike elves).
I would LOVE to play real female monsters.
IMO Female naga model is just meh, I would love to play a more snake-faced-like creature like the male (or Sethrak).

[Cosmic Janitor]

Not sure about overall distribution, but I've met way too many insecure guys over the years that "needed" to play on horde side to prove their masculinity. I would say you will find more of these on Horde from my experience, but I can only guess what their overall population within the playerbase is. So for those guys I'd argue yes. I think the trend is there, but it's hard to gauge how pronounced it is. Many people these days just want a wholesome package of armor looking good and decent animations. Others haven't seen how their character looks like outside of the character selection screen since 2005 since their zoom is stuck at max distance.

[sarym13]

Idk every other guy I meet seems to prefer playing Female chars with Female names.

I mean I can kinda understand playing a Female as a man, but naming it with a clear feminine name too just seems odd.

[Yriel]

Idk every other guy I meet seems to prefer playing Female chars with Female names.

I mean I can kinda understand playing a Female as a man, but naming it with a clear feminine name too just seems odd.

I mean, i don't care either way but why would you pick a female avatar and name it "John"? That seems even more strange to me, a female character should have a female name.
And if you think an avatar would be indicative of the person playing it then you are very naive or desperate.