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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast Topic: What's behind stereotypes about what ladies play in WoW?
by Olivia Grace 
Dec 26th 2011 at 8:00AM
So I did what any sane girl would do in 2011 -- I went and posted about it on Twitter. I went to another session and emerged to quite a response from various ladies all saying that they PvP or that they knew ladies who did and who wouldn't be particularly happy to be told that PvP wasn't something women did.
Anyhow, as I was saying, this provoked some thought. I do think there are gender stereotypes in WoW -- mostly, that women heal far more than they do anything else and that almost all tanks are men. As an anthropology student, I'm adept at making sweeping generalizations, and I wouldn't think for a moment that either of these statements are absolute truths.
However, they do raise questions. First, is there any truth to them at all? Are healers really the group in WoW where female players are most well represented? Are tanks genuinely the role least played by women? And do ladies really make up a far higher percentage of the PvE playerbase than they do the PvP one?
And, of course, the burning question underlying all of the above: If so, why?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 7)
Nkara Dec 26th 2011 9:58AM
I'm a woman and play a Night Elf Druid. In vanilla WoW druid had to be healers to raid, so I healed and lead the healing team with another girl who played a priest. But I think that's as far as the archetypes went in our guild. We had at least one female represented in each class and 25% of the raid were females when we had our Nefarian 1st kill. Our MT was a 16-year old girl, one of the best tanks I've seen. She rerolled a Paladin and became one of our best healers while I myself was bear-tanking through TBC.
I both love healing and tanking and I used to PvP alot and hold the title Field Marshal from vanilla WoW. All my alts are mostly melee DPS.
So while being quite stereotypical, then again I'm not at all. :)
I am under the impression that women are more likely to either roll healer or tank, I think we like to have the responsible and control it gives us. And I think most girls make excellent tanks and healers, because in a male-dominant world we try harder to prove ourselves.
lilsapheire Dec 26th 2011 10:03AM
I am a 30-something woman with two mains, one pally healer and one DK tank. My tank is by far my favorite character to play (mainly because DK play style be it tank or dps just suits me), and I am also one of our guild's raid leaders on the DK. I guess people who don't hear me on mumble don't realize I'm female though; about half of my toons including my tank are male. Hey, male belf has the best 2-handed animation in the game imo!
As far as dps goes I do a little of all of it, but I prefer melee. I feel a lot more bad ass if I'm up close and personal slashing the heck out of a boss than standing far back and casting spells.
I enjoy healing too, and the best healers in our guild are female, it's true, so I suppose I'm not the true anti-stereotype. I just try to do a little of everything. This is a game we all pay for and personally I like to experience as much content as possible. I love PVP on my DK, especially arenas!
jacob.rabjohns Dec 26th 2011 10:06AM
Im a guy, a rugby player and generally quite full on in real life. I play 4 healers at 85, and not much else, maybe a bit of protadin tanking. Im assuming that this makes me a girl? :D
In a serious note, I think people in WoW can be split into two crowds, the escapists, and the fantasists. As a general rule, escapists will want to play a role in game more opposed to their real life situation, and fantasists will want to morph their existing world and persona into a more exciting one. I think this explains the divides within roles more accurately than just male vs female.
I do know plenty of female tanks, and even a few female dps (though these seem to be rarer to be honest). I think in reality, female players get a fair bit of stick, and as such tend to be better players on average. Most of the proper facerollers and mouthbreathers are guys, you know this to be true. That rogue doing 8k on ultraxion, hes a guy.
TL;DR: Divides within game roles are down to indavidual psychology, not sex :P
Olivia Grace Dec 26th 2011 6:42PM
That's a really interesting point... I like it!
And for the record, my first 80/85 was a protadin, and I still consider her my main...
Olivia
Olivia Grace Dec 26th 2011 6:45PM
I should add, though, the reality in /played is rather different....
Snowfeather Dec 26th 2011 10:09AM
I'm a female gamer that tends to fit with the pet collecting stereotype, as well as not pvping. However, I tank. I like dpsing on my hunter as well, but my druid has been my main since release. Granted, until 1.8 came, I healed, but as soon as that patch hit I went feral and started tanking. Out of all the roles, I think I like it the best, and while I have spent a year or so here and there dpsing, I have never gone back to healing.
Bee Dec 26th 2011 10:11AM
I used to like debates like this one. I am interested in why people play what they play, I like knowing what makes people tick. I play WoW and I am a woman. I don't think it is possible to gender stereotype people according to their playstyle - to do so simply adds to the 'belief' that men = type a and women = type b.
I would have hoped that by this point in our rich, diverse, cultural world, we'd moved on from that. After all - we don't ask why players from racial, sexual orientations or religious backgrounds choose to tank, dps or heal. Why should we think anything different about male and female?
Sorry - I am sure this is likely to provoke some haters - but so long as we keep pointing out 'differences' the more re-inforced those differences become.
Dea ex Machina Dec 26th 2011 10:13AM
*shrug* My guild is majority female, which means that MOST roles are filled by women. Lady tanks, lady healers, lady deeps. And we're a big social guild, so a HUGE variety of playstyles are represented. Raiders, arena players, dungeons, BG enthusiasts, RP.
The gaming stereotypes are basically the same old real world stereotypes dolled up in new terminology. ("Women are born healers" = "Women are NATURALLY more nurturing!" et cetera), and the thing is, I think a lot of people confuse cause and effect. If there ARE more women playing healers and more men playing tanks, (no idea if that's true) is that because they are NATURALLY drawn to those roles? Or because they feel subtle social pressure to take on those roles?
When the guild needs another tank, do they beg Bob to respec? Or Bonita? When someone needs another member of an arena team for threes, does it occur to them to ask Tiffany? Male tanks never have to deal with idiots refusing to listen to them or take their advice JUST because "men don't tank" (they may get guys acting like dicks for other reasons, but they're spared THAT one). When a woman plays a priest, no one is making fun of her for wearing a "dress." Guys are praised for being aggressive and taking the lead, and insulted for acting 'gay' if they don't. Women are lauded for being 'supportive' and 'understanding,' and called b****es if they aren't.
If there actually IS any "natural" inclination to one role or another? There is NO WAY TO TELL. Because it is drowned out by the much louder and more pervasive UNnatural pressures pushing people into one role or another.
Meighan Dec 26th 2011 10:26AM
In my ten-man raid team there are two regular players who are women, and both of us heal.
One of our alternates, though, is a woman who used to heal and fell in love with her shadow spec, and we're currently training/gearing a woman who as far as I know has only ever dpsed.
Personally, tanking is my first love. I don't do it often anymore because our guild has more people who want to tank than we can really accomodate (unusual problem, I know). And the reason I don't have a prot spec all the time and tank pugs? I need my second spec for PVP holy.
Alysandir Dec 26th 2011 10:58AM
Here's an opposing stereotype for you: I'm a man and I play exclusively healers.
That's not to say that I haven't tried tanking or DPSing, or that I don't swap over to an alternate spec to do so when my guild needs me to, but rather that my preference is always to heal.
Conversely, my guild is about 70/30 men/women, and no, most of them are not wives or girlfriends. None of the women in our guild play a healer; they're all DPS (and none of them play a hunter, BTW). Two of them have tanks as their alts. At least one of them PVPs. And none of them take anybody's crap.
-Alys
TLB Dec 26th 2011 11:00AM
Let me see if I can spell it out. Everybody is an individual with their own likes and dislikes. However, those likes and dislikes are influenced by culture and biology. Which influence dominates a given individual is unkown and highly politicized. Anthropology as an academic field is highly politicized so expecting a straight answer from them is unlikely. So an unbiased answer as to whether gender is a major factor in what role a person plays in WoW is nigh impossible. Basically people have to go by what they've seen themselves (which is rather imprecise) since the 'experts' in gender roles are unreliable.
So threads like this might be entertaining but are futile in getting a real answer to how much or how little gender influences a players role in WoW. However it does give some women a chance to say "I am women hear me rawr!" :P
Raposa Dec 26th 2011 11:07AM
Adding some more data to the survey, my girlfriend is a kitty/bear feral druid and I'm a holy/ret paladin. She stands in front line while I... well, actually I also stand in the front line to punch mobs for mana, stun, interrupt and all that stuff, but I dont see any problems in doing the supposed support role while she does the physical thing.
We also do old raids for cash and transmog stuff, usually as cat going bear when necessary and ret paladin offhealing (selfless healer ftw). Also arenas and bgs. I think thats the whole package.
Ringo Flinthammer Dec 26th 2011 11:24AM
My wife always plays healers in MMOs. But she also PvPs at a high level (she made Lt. Commander pre-TBC). I've also fought beside female tanks.
That said, I certainly see an awful lot of female healers -- I rarely do LFR and mostly play with people I know, or with friends of friends -- so there is something to at least some of the stereotypes.
Nagaina Dec 26th 2011 11:33AM
My personal data samples:
The guild's leadership council, at this moment, consists at the Guardian level of five women and one man. Of those five women two are healers (my holy paladin PvP healer, and a druid PvE raiding healer), the rest are either tanks or DPS or some blend of the two; the man's main is a resto shaman who heals both PvE and PvP.
In our general guild membership, which is restricted to 18+ and whose membership age skews higher, mid-thirties up, the majority of our tanks and DPS are women, while the majority of our healers, or at least healer-offspecs, are male. Perhaps we're a statistical anomaly.
For the record, I don't enjoy healing PvE because the stress level is high enough to trigger performance-anxiety in me. Healing PvP is a somewhat different game, one that I enjoy much, much more, simply because the nature of it is different -- it's been my experience that, in PvP, you can *expect* to be dead at least part of the time, and so the individual performance pressure differentials are somewhat different.
Killik Dec 26th 2011 1:45PM
That's a similar proportion to my guild. Pretty much all the raiding healers are male and they have their own little tight-knit team. About half the tanks are female and quite a chunk of the ranged dps.
nfkindred Dec 26th 2011 11:58AM
In the best raiding guild that I had the pleasure of you playing in our main tank was a awsome women, she also became the guild lead. We had a shamn who was enhance that seemed to know almost every dps spec hands down, but we also had a few female healers, anywasy not to prattle on lol. Xylia,diamonds, moreesta. Miss you guys and it was awsome playing you. Nf
Andraste Dec 26th 2011 12:04PM
Hmm... Bit on the fence with this one; yes, I'm a woman whose main (currently) is a healer - before that though I was a TG warrior. I was also GM/RL of a 10man strict guild who got ICCHc clear pre 30% buff (as a healer, but still leader). My main alt is a hc ds ready prot pala, I also have my warrior and dk kitted out to tank raids. My Druid is still in hc stages, and has been known to moonlight as a tree - it is more fun than bear!
My priest is what I enjoy, but I'm the boss of our 6/7 healer team; I raid lead our alt 10 man - it's a stereotype that basically I disagree with. It is more likely that women you encounter don't announce it to the world because it can lead to unwanted and unwelcome attention - I'm enjoying a game exactly the same as you are...
Alec Dec 26th 2011 12:14PM
In my US government class we learned that minority races tend to be more politically active than the majority who are at equal income/education levels.
Now if we take this and apply it to WoW I think well find something. Women are the minority in WoW. It's rare when you see one but when you see one, they are avid about it. Now because women are the minority they are more likely to do what is necessary to excel because they are outnumbered in the community, and because it takes more work to achieve equal success because of prejudices, etc.
(Keep in mind what I say is not alway the case in guilds)
So I think the fact that you see more women healers is because that is what is likely to get them in a raid, because in raids, DPS are easily replaceable and healers are limited. And tank spots are often filled by men because I think prejudices and egos keep male raid leaders from picking female tanks to lead them into battle.
But I would also agree with some of the previous posters that is a personality thing.
Healers are a different breed. They aren't afraid to take on the risk of being blamed for the raid failing because they trust their own ability. And they arent often prideful because they don't usually get credit when the raid goes well.
Lastly I think there's the chance that women pick healing roles for the sole fact that it gets less attention. Girl gamers are often barraged with sexist remarks on sight in video games. And since healing gets the least attention (when done well) that is where they naturally go to escape the spotlight.
Now I may just be an ignorant 17 year old gamer but this may be an insight to the view of the younger population of WoW. Personally I would feel more comfortable with a good female healer than a equally good male healer. Now that's probably my primal instincts of viewing women as nurturers, but it's just how I feel. Just my 2 cents :)
pwndu Dec 26th 2011 12:23PM
Just because the avatar you are looking at is male or female, does not mean the person behind that pc screen is the same gender. I am a woman, I play male and female toons. I heal, dps, and learning to tank. You will never know who you are in group with and it is unfair to assume that women only play supportive roles.
Kimberly Dec 26th 2011 12:20PM
I am a female WoW player as well. My main is a paladin tank. I also pvp heal. I love tanking because it puts me in charge of the situation. I decide the pace, the direction, and everything else that happens. I'm told I'm good at it, but I always look to improve. I do not put up with BS from pugs and have been known to let things eat stupid dps. If you want to cast mirror images and try to pew pew the dragon before I get there, then it's welcome to eat you.
For PvP healing, I love it because I get to run around and go 'na na na! Can't kill me!' And there is a certain satisfaction while my rogue/dk/warrior buddy face smashes the other team.
I am the paladin expert of my guild. An officer and I have been GM of the guild several times. (We rotate GM's out every 6 months to prevent burnout).
I have 6 level 85's all of various classes and role and 4 more up and coming. I've done all the classes (but warrior) and pallies are my fav. And so is tanking.
I started WoW as a paladin healer back in BC, when they were the tank healer to have. My guild needed one, badly... so I filled the role. Talk about throwing the newbie into the fire. Healers are unappreciated. In fact, it's one of the harder jobs in WoW to do. Least, back in BC when healers had to be more proactive and couldn't just face smash.
Then, they wanted me to tank... so I leveled another pally and tanked.. and loved it. Haven't looked back since.
The WoW stereotype is wrong. And anyone who continues to insist by it obviously hasn't been paying attention.