We (me and friends) have been discussing a lot lately about why some race/gender-combinations are badly underrepresentated in WoW (Female dwarfs pops to mind fairly quick). We have also been arguing a lot about why a lot of male players play female chars, while the opposite is very seldom seen.

My own personal theories for the first are fairly obvious - people want to play pretty races, and since a lot of female chars are played by guys they want a sexy ass to look at while playing. This leaves female tauren and dwarfs far behind. Do you think that this is true or are there other things behind this as well?

On the second question I'm at a loss, though. I am myself a female gamer, playing a female char, and the thought of playing a male char hadn't even occurred to me until someone brought up the subject. Lots of males plays female chars though. Why am I, and many girly gamers with me, so reluctant to play male characters? I would be very happy for some intelligent input on the subject.

The same reason why 99% of commercials have pretty young women advertising the product, and not pretty young men.

I play a female char and male player. When I created this char I wanted to have an orginal combination of class, race and gender so I could feel unique. I also made her look as ugly as possible.

I never liked it when I saw another female undead mage who also looked ugly. My feel of uniqueness dissapeared.

Those of us with any brains have long been left to wonder what the hell is up with such flagrant disproportion. 1% is far too great an amount to commit to pretty young men at the cost of the alternative.

Anyway, http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewt...hp?id=7720&p=1 gets into some of this in the later pages.

Orc Rogues are the coolest combination, and yet the most underrepresented. Female Orc Rogues don't even exist, they're actually a fairytale that kids hear. That probably has something to do with their dance being fucking nasty though.

I spend pretty much every waking moment wishing I could reroll my UD rogue to an Orc. Stupid racials :(

I would never play my tauren warrior in instances if it wasn't for sweet sweet deviate delight :(

I have not one, but two female dwarves, and that's not counting bank alts.

A little birdie is telling me I'm weird.

dont tell anyone, but secret sources tell me that guys are more visual, as a rule, then girls. If you put a picture of a well (or better than well) proportioned lady in front of them, they will want to look at it.

It's a visual sexually driven thing.

Hypothesis:
A higher % of men who play nightelves and humans play female toons than men playing dwarves and taurens play female toons.

if it's not the case that the % of guys playing females increases with the (subjective, but w/e) beauty of the female toons in that race, then I'll be wrong. but i bet i'm right...

Also, I think only one of our female Tauren is female IRL. As compared to, I think, 3 or 4 men playing ladycows.

Maybe we're weird. Pono's a bull, though.

I think discofiend is onto something here :D

I do know of two girls who both play male humans, just to make it even stranger they are called Jarek and Jaric.
No they didn't know each other before meeting in WoW but have read some similar books ;)

Dude, Uma Thurman would not rock in Kill Bill if she was fat and had one leg. The same is not necessarily true of male characters (see: OldBoy, Zatoichi, Toxic Avenger, etc)