Rolled it because I played human in wc3, and I usually start out with the most basic race/class in rpg's, thus human warrior was my first choice. However, mage/sorceror/sorceress completly owned in Diablo, Diablo II and caster classes are usually slow to learn but powerful when you know them, so I ended up rolling a human mage.

Needless to say, I wasn't fully aware of how mmo's work, but luckily my race,class and faction turned out to be pretty awesome.

Well, my main is a blonde female nightelf warrior. I happen to like her look, and most gear looks awesome on the female model (although wrath shoulders get in the way of the female nelf 'attack' stance).

I agree with you about escapism to a certain extent. I like logging in and putting on the persona of my war - she's pretty, picks flowers and looks awesome tanking bad-ass monsters throughout the game. As to the role playing aspect, I generally do roleplay my chars a little (although folk on RP servers would laugh at my version of 'role-playing'). However I do notice that I get significantly different reactions from people on my server when I'm on my female nelf, as opposed to my male human paladin. I've had people offering me gold to dance for them (not on the paladin), I get pestered with people begging for gold, asking for groups etc - all on my female toon. The male one gets very little of this.

Somehow the dark skinned, blonde male paladin in judgement armor and wielding a sulfuras is not nearly as approachable as a blonde nelf female wearing wrath. Nfi why - it's sometimes quite annoying actually. I sometimes wonder if RL females roll male toons just to get away from this nonsense.