Forbuzzall's Reply to my previous post.

Here is Forbuzzall's story: He took time to write this up and it is very interesting and insightful. I think everyone should take a look at it and comment if you'd like. Ask any questions. I can relay the questions onto my guild's forum for him to answer and get back to anyone.

Background: I have been playing WoW for just under 4?years. My son gave me the game for my birthday so that we could play together. We had a father-son guild called Wizard's First Rule. He stopped playing I still play. It was a totally different game back then.
We began on the server Darkspear, where he was in a guild called Tears of Sorrow. When I hit 60 I was going to join his guild and do something called raiding. When my Tauren Hunter was around 35, the guild and my son transferred to Hakkar, rerolled alliance and changed their name to Dominance.
I started a warrior on Hakkar named Troglobyte (my gaming name in every game I have played, and I might add I am the original Troglobyte, I have been gaming since on-line gaming began.) but continued to play my hunter until I reached 42. I was asked by the leadership of Dominance to roll a druid, so I did. At the time druids were the least played class and by far the hardest to level. Since Dominance did not allow anyone under 60 (level cap in those days) in the guild I started out on my own, wandering the shores of Dark Shore.


2. The mindset of girls playing and how they are treated in the game.

The first guild that I joined on Hakkar was called Sinful Retribution. It was a guild composed mostly of young males, probably none above the age of 25. I base this assumption on the level of maturity I observed. There was however, one woman in this guild, whom I gradually began to quest with regularly. Her name was Alida. We leveled together, died together on quests and in instances, along with our co-guildy Rodwravial (sp?).

We were nearing level or just over level 40 when on one particular day, I was asked to join in the killing of a nasty dinosaur in STV. I was invited to a group, composed of 4 people composed solely of members of Sinful Retribution. I suggested that we include Alida in this group. I was ignored. I asked again for them to invite Alida, and was told that they would not invite her. I asked why they would not invite her and was told "cause she's a girl". I immediately left the group and told them that I would no longer be a member of a guild that discriminated because of gender. (What I actually said was not very nice and probably made them cry, which was childish of me, but at their level of understanding).

I have found that generally the way "girls" are treated in wow, is exactly the same way they are treated in real life, why should there be a presumption that in-game would be any different than out-game ?

Generally and I repeat, generally, the age of the male determines how the female is treated. Young males tend to be less inclined to play with girls. Males entering puberty tend to like to play with girls and often the atmosphere of this play is overlayed with sexual innuendo, (the primal urge to procreate is the strongest driving factors in human existence). It could be argued that our sole purpose of existence is to procreate, then to kill each other in war. But that is getting off in to a completely different direction.

This of course directly leads in to #3, the assumption of girl characters being males rather than females.
If the statement "everyone assumes girl characters are actually boys playing them" is true than some of the behavior i have observed in this game is very interesting.

On several occasions I have been "stopped" by a 'female player', who offered to strip and dance for me for X gold. In fact I have had to ask a guild member to stop doing this, because it was giving the guild a bad name. He was male and advertising his "services" in /2.

Gender bending/ gender confusion is just as prevalent in wow as in the real world as is homosexuality. Again, WoW is a microcosm of the real world. I am not saying that males that play female characters are expressing repressed homosexuality across the board, but in some cases this is true. I have often heard the rationalization "I would rather look at a female ass while I'm playing, than a male ass".
I find it interesting that most female players play female toons as their mains, with few playing a male toon as such, while many males play females as their mains. Perhaps this is due to the low female to male in-game ratio thus fewer females are observable playing males as their mains. But out of the women that I have seen playing 99% have female toons as their main.

Now that I have digressed into a female-male maelstrom, pardon the pun, I have observed that most people that have played wow for a while will ask the gender of a toon, where as newer players presume gender. The more experienced player knows to ask, and does not presume to a greater extent. However I have also observed many male players calling people that they know are male 'her', yet they do not call players they know are female 'him'.

I have a 30 something female toon named Calimaria (she is Dreanae, thus the squid reference). At one time I was "chased' by a male player who kept telling me that he would "love to eat Calimaria", even after informing him that I was male. I was followed all over Ashenvale and hounded for several minutes until I told him that I was going to report him for sexual harassment.

Sexual Harassment is just as prevalent in wow as outside the game. I have heard of one particular guild requiring that a female member post a picture of her breasts on their guild website, (Fantastic Product), my son was in this guild and told me that she was being harassed so badly that she left the guild in tears. I could list the names of the people's toons that were guilty of this, but it would be meaningless.It was not just one member of this guild who was guilty of this but several. Most of them are in their early 20's, if that matters, and they still play and can often be seen making lewd comments in the trade channel. I will give you a clue by stating that one is a DK and has the word tity in his name, and was the one who started it. (not surprising).

This ties in to #4: Playing to temporarily escape the responsibilities of the real world.

Any form of recreation is a temporary escape from the responsibilities of the real world.

However this escape can sometimes manifest itself as a escape from more than just responsibilities. It can also be an escape from morality. I have observed every possible type of human behavior in WoW, from racism to the happy little sociopath. WoW is indeed a microcosm of the real world and reflects it well.

5. How the structure of Guilds pertain to society.


Basically there are three types of people. The Pigs, the Dogs, and the Sheep. This is a broad "sterotypification".

1. The Pigs are those that exploit others. They tend to be ego-centric. They are those that have little or no morals/ethics and will do and say anything to get what they want. They are the users and the abusers. They seek power at any cost and care little for whom they destroy or hurt 'getting there'. They tend to be the controllers of society, the politicians, the manipulators, the wealthy, the elite. They believe "the masses are asses".

2. The Dogs are the creators, the thinkers, those that see what is and say it could be better. They can be predatory when necessary, but often prefer to use their intellect to resolve issues rather than their brawn. They tend to be 'different' and are often outside of society. They are the revolutionaries, the inventors, the artists, the intellectuals, the dreamers, the antithesis. They are the ones that call for change and act to bring it about. They are the minority and the driving force behind change in the world.

3. The Sheep are the followers, the latcher-oners. Those that follow blindly and they are seekers of social acceptance. They want to fit in, to conform, not to confront and are reluctant to change. They listen to what they are told and obey. They compromise the vast majority of the species, and are just your average person. They are "the masses".
"Given proper motivation, the sheep will believe almost anything. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. Their heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. They can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so all are easier to fool" and to control. (""loosely paraphrased from Wizards First Rule by Sir Goodkind)

Yes this is not entirely accurate, however it is to some extent. I do believe that it reflects the overall stereotypical structure of our society in general, and is echoed in wow.

I restate, wow is the real world, there is no difference. It can not be in existence outside the real world or it could not exist. It is just a subset.


Now for the best part:

1. People meeting on WOW possible leading to marriage or really good friendships.

This is why I play WoW. Friendship. Comradery, the glory of defending the world from evil with people that I like and enjoy the company of. Being a displaced New Yorker, who left most of my good friends behind when I moved to florida, I find what I am missing in wow. (on top of that I moved from the part of florida I had been living in for 5 years and again left my friends too far away for easy social interaction, driving 5 hours... not good). I have made some really good friends in this game, friendships that I hope will last far longer than the game itself.


Ok I hope this mess of words is at least somewhat coherant, I have not had my first injection of caffine yet...