I've been mulling over a pet theory of mine, perhaps others have been too. This theory is basically that certain classes, as a general rule, attract certain personality types, flaws and excellent traits both. I was wondering if others believed this or held similar views.

Examples:

Six months after WoW came out, 4 of the top 5 alliance guilds on my server (I think) were run by Mages. Coincidence? Mages, it seems to me (I'm a mage) to have more controlling (bad) and organizational (good) types in them.

Rogues. Rogues, it seems to me, tend to be singularly focussed types, as their class ends up being. We can see this from the 15000 threads (a new one posted every few days) entitled: "DPS with X Spec and Y Weapon" or "Garrote v. Riposte, News at 11!" Hunters seem to fall into this catagory as well, ocassionally. I think this comes with its good and bad as well.

I don't want to ruin all the examples people may have or beliefs, I just thought I'd get the ball rolling if people had experienced this or thought similar thoughts.

Another, related topic is that of female gamers. Not to be sexist at all (please don't think thats what I'm trying to do), but it seems like in my experiences, the vast majority of female MMO gamers are healers. Is there something about healing, being a female, the "fighting game" in general or some other phenomenon going on? I personally know female warlocks and mages as well, but of the 8 or so females I personally know in WoW, 5 or 6 are priests or druids. Additionally, wives and female significant others tend to run priests with their significant other and heal them, often a warrior. I personally know of four such combinations on my server alone. Why is that?

So, which came first: The personality or the class?

From my experience, rogues I've played with more often than not are the "twitch" type. While we're waiting around or discussing something, I often see like 3 or 4 people in the raid jumping around in circles, and 9/10 times it's the rogues.

I do it too, while not even realizing it. After a raid when I'm thinking about what to do next or talking on vent, I'm subconsciously doing jumping laps around the top of the bank in orgrimmar.

My wife initially levelled a warrior to 60 with my mage, but she found at 60 when we started to run some of the 40 person instances she disliked the pressure of tanking in those very early days.

She then rolled a shaman that levelled with my warrior, and she is now completely healing focused while my warrior is now the MT for our guild. I am also the GM for our guild for what it's worth.

An interesting topic indeed. Now that I think about it, I tend to have a peaceful, calm outlook towards most of the hunters in my guild. Furthermore, two of our three females were indeed healers.

I personally have a 60 shaman and a 60 rogue, and the way I play them, I feel like quite the Gemini. I play my shaman only as a pve healer and really enjoy helping the raid survive as I spam heals across fourty health bars. On the other hand, I enjoy the much narrower focus while playing my rogue. People would probably consider me more controling over the next, yet I feel it's from the fact that I feel "people need to step up" or nothing will get done, as opposed to simply being controling because of the need to be in control..

From my experience every single priest I know or have ever played with fits into 3 personality categories;

1. Quiet, super-healbot (robo-gamer). A few priests in my guild who are insanely good but basically are very quiet and generally great raiders, fit this category. Two of them even make quite a bit of money playing other games.

2. Type-A Leadership Know-It-All guys. They think they're the best, (sometimes know they're the best) but generally are very opinionated, talk a lot, and pretty much rolled a priest because they think they're the best and don't trust others to do the healing.

3. Rolled a priest to be wanted. Obviously since healers are pretty desirable in this game, people do this. They like being healers, but they essentially play the class to be wanted in groups / liked by the guild / needed by the guild.


Every priest I've ever met falls into one of those 3 categories, and every person who has heard my theory hasn't disagreed.

Druids - All somewhat crazy for playing druids.

Warriors - The really good ones are pretty much jerks and think everybody that isn't as good as them (which is about 5 people) sucks terribly at this game.



edit: As for the "twitch" comment, you'll never see me stop jumping around unless I'm AFK.

I think MMOs can attract a lot of players who normally aren't interested in video games through their social aspect. If I can make a sweeping generalization, that can be particularly attractive to women. Healing is group-based and social, thus accenting the part of the game that gets them there in the first place. (And your observation holds true for my guild. 5 or 6 female members, 3 priests, 2 druids, 1 rogue.)

Honestly, for me, though, it was control rather than social interaction that led me to healing.

I think it has more to do with personality types rather than gender.

The girls in my guild range through all classes, though the mom's and wives tend to play more healer roles in general.

The most aggressive of our guild is one of the Officers, Aiyanna, who will go out of her way to hunt down and kill any Alliance she finds, tracking them through zones if she has to. She plays a mage and is as competitive and vicious as any other. My friend's girlfrend, started as a Hunter (though this may be more due to the cute pet), but then moved on to a rogue when she re-rolled Horde because she enjoyed the fast killing pace and straight beat down ability.

What's great is the RL female rogues who choose gear based on how it looks.

....

Seriously.

It's their $15/month I guess. Just glad I don't have to raid with them.

Not just females. It took the combined force of 39 people on vent yelling for ten minutes to finally get me to accept a piece of Genesis.

They wrecked you.

Hybrid gear...>.<

Isn't genesis the druid T2.5 stuff that's typically considered 'more feral'? If blowing your DKP on feral stuff isn't your thing, I can see you not wanting it w/ T3 so close on the horizon. Speaking as a min/maxing rogue, the only thing I look at is stats - and given the choice, I'd probably make my character as ugly as possible for entertainment value.