MMO Bans Men Playing As Women 616
jkcity writes "In a bizarre move Aurora Technology the owners of the King of the World MMORPG has taken the unusual step of banning men who play women characters but the ban itself does not stretch to women playing men. If you want to play as a woman now in game you have to prove you are a women via web cam. This is something that people ask for in many mmorpgs I myself have seen people say people who play women in EVE online as being some kind of degenerate but how long can a policy of verification by web cam last since its so easy to get around it doesn't seem to solve much and is an insult to many."
So that means... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting excuse ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, no matter how hard you beg the developer, that hot elven chick just won't be that way in real life. And this step doesn't get you closer to that.
Just watch... (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's a conservative guess...I bet most would skew it even more towards male players.
Mom is a woman! Easy fix... (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't work... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not too hard for a men to disguise as a women, specially under a webcam feed. Really motivated (and weird) dudes will certainly keep playing as women if they want to.
Greater crowds than ever... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Idiotic (Score:2, Insightful)
Go play a MU* if you want roleplay.
So how do you "role play" this? (Score:4, Insightful)
(If they're planning to "grandfather" ["grandmother?"] existing male-as-female avatars, that'll probably create even more problems for them.)
Re:So that means... (Score:5, Insightful)
*You can get free stuff with minimal effort.
*You don't spend 30+ hours a week staring at the cartoon picture of a guy's ass.
Hey look... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just watch... (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple fix (Score:4, Insightful)
Real-life sex: M/F
Re:finally (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's what females do in real life; use their feminine wiles to their advantage.
But your complaint is absurd. If one is unable to resist the feminine wiles of an online-character, then it's his own fault, not fault of the the person playing the female character.
I've known many that have played characters of the player's opposite sex (both men playing as women and women playing as men), and I see no problem with it. The whole point of playing RPGs (either multi-player or single-player) is to get to assume a role you could never assume in real life. The ability to choose your character's gender, ethnicity, etc, goes along with that.
This business of requiring webcams for anyone playing as a woman is the stupidest thing I've heard of in a long time.
TG's (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just watch... (Score:2, Insightful)
No more metroid... (Score:5, Insightful)
What a load of crap. It's fantasy - a game for goodness sake. My guess is really some loser who runs the service just wants to look at pictures of the people playing women characters.
Re:So that means... (Score:5, Insightful)
At any rate, what is to stop me, or anyone with a girlfriend or wife, from a quick substitution for the webcam. My wife would think this rule is ridiculous and do it in a heartbeat.
More to the point though, I have to agree with the Parent here... Its a FREAKING RPG. Let people Role Play in the Game as they see fit.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
"The Internet: where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents."
Re:Just watch... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I should point out that IF we find that there are 80% or more men in a game that bans men playing as women, we should consider that maybe the registration requirements alienated real women by making registration a hassle causing them to a) find another MMORPG or b) play as men. Really, it is a stupid move. Just let people role play however they want. I presume the motivation behind this banning is men tired of flirting with women that turn out to be men. Maybe it is time for guys to learn that anonymity is not an excuse to flirt with anyone that claims to be a woman.
-matthew
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Am I the only one who finds the summary offensive? (Score:2, Insightful)
So the grammatically-challenged, obviously teenage and sexually-challenged writer of the summary thinks it's his inalienable, god-given right to hit on anything with pixellated boobies, and finds the very idea of people role-playing in a role-playing game to be degenerate. Perhaps he shouldn't be such a slavering mess of inadequacy that he feels the need to flirt in a role-playing game with any avatar that approximates female and then be disturbed when the controlling player isn't. Avatar. Not player. The two are distinct, and it merely shows the stupidity of a significant proportion of MMO players that they can't appreciate that fact.
Amusingly enough, my captcha for this post was 'redneck'.
Yes, that he most certainly is.
Re:So that means... (Score:3, Insightful)
My first thought exactly. The second thought though, was what about cases where someone has a sexually ambiguous look? This is a lawsuit waiting to happen for this company, especially since they didn't require women to play only women characters. That's discrimination plain and simple.
Just wait until some mannish-looking woman is denied a female character...
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
How insecure do you have to be to have your sexuality threated by a male avatar in a freaking ROLE PLAYING game? You're either gay or you aren't. Looking at a male avatar doesn't make you gay.
Are all your friends 14 years old?
I've heard some good practical reason to play as a woman (free shit from other players, for example), but feeling insecure about looking at a male avatar? WTF?
-matthew
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So that means... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Interesting excuse ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not only does it restrict the character options available for RL male players, it completely changes the gaming experience for RL female players who choose female characters.
When I played WoW, there seemed to be roughly the same amount of female and male characters. There were plenty of men who played female characters, so people didn't see a female character wander onto their screen and immediately start sending "Pics plz" "R U hot?" "Wanna cyber?" tells. In that situation, RL women who play female characters had the option to keep their sex to themselves. This requirement removes that option, and will certainly result in a increase of (probably undesired) attention.
Silver Lining ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So that means... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, revealing age scares me even more! I still love video games and mmorpg's in particular, but skew significantly older than the core demographic. What does that mean? It means getting party invites becomes one hell of a lot harder when you're old enough to be the party leader's dad! Online games are a great way to have fun with others who share a common interest, but too many details from real life would just get in the way of that. I have to be an old guy in real life everyday, do I have to do that in online games too? I hope not!
Lets cut to the chase (Score:3, Insightful)
Hence Laura Crofts fame.
Re:So that means... (Score:5, Insightful)
3rd person perspective (was Re:So that means...) (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why I hate 3rd person perspective. Most of the "scenery" is your avatar's ass. I like to see the damn game! It espeically pisses me off when your avatar gets in the way of seeing something important. Fixed camera (such as resident evil) is even worse--try and aim at a target in 3d space while viewing on a flat screen...WTF?
Re:So that means... (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I'd played female tabletop RPG characters with about equal frequency as male PCs for years, without having to worry about that. If the other players at the table bothered me "in that way," a quick shocking grasp or heat metal to the codpiece set them straight.
But my first female toon in WoW was a bank alt, and I dressed her in her undies and a buccaneer's shirt, cuz she looked good in them. Then I noticed other toons standing around and gawking at her.
And you know, I finally felt what most women must have to learn to deal with when they grow bewbs.
And the second revalation is that it only took me about 60 seconds to get over it, and ignore it. It's their problem, not mine.
So, I say, let cross-gender roleplaying happen. It's educational.
Re:Playing gender roles (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Zxeses did by saying, "I play a female because I'm
Maybe, but that isn't what he said.
Only if you note that you feel gay when you look at another male and make a conscious effort to not look at them. Yeah, I'd call that insecure.
-matthew
Re:Playing gender roles (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you missed the important part: the insistence by these male players that "I don't really see it as representing me" and "I just like looking at my avatar." Otherwise you'd also be trying to argue that it is wholly impossible for a truly heterosexual man to admire and envy another man's physique, and that the minority of male players who pick female avatars are the only truly heterosexual men on the server.
Avatars are about who you want to pretend to be. A scrawny geek will pick the butch male because he wants to pretend to be, and a guy will pick a female character because that is who he wants to pretend to be. But once the second guy starts dropping the "I just like looking at my avatar" excuse, it's less about pretending in the game and more about pretending in real life; the scrawny geek with the ripped barbarian avatar at least knows he's pretending.
It's the ones who enjoy pretending to be a woman and don't admit it to themselves that are the problem here, and that's what the "It's not really me" rationale is all about.
Re:So that means... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless, of course, they want to be
Re:So that means... MMO Crying Game (Score:3, Insightful)
And, if there's no law preventing a man from dressing up as a woman in real life, why should there be restrictions for them to do so in a virtual world?
For anyone whose thinking, "well in real life, at a real bar, I can tell it's a man dressed up like a woman so I won't ever talk to him -- that's the difference!", I challenge you to go see a cabaret show in Thailand and *then* say that. I saw a few performers that were way hotter than my wife who would have made me not care about the presence of a Y chromosome.
http://images.google.com/images?q=cabaret+show+thailand [google.com]
Re:There's only one solution to this... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's sad that the assumption is that playing a gender other than your biological sex is only done for deception. Having to conform to gender roles is bad enough in real life; let's not bring it online too (and a roleplay game, of all places!), where your physical body shouldn't matter.
One of the things I found interesting about traditional (non-computer) roleplaying is that there were no hangups in playing a different gender (after all, no different to playing a different species such as a dwarf or an elf), but I guess as it becomes mainstream, we get all the mainstream prejudices and hangups.
I wonder, can women still play men in this game?