I’ve been playing MMOs for over 10 years now. Every couple of years, some player that I don’t know in real life develops a crush on me, and I have to have a “You don’t really know. I’m not really green skinned with big boobs, running around in a chain mail bikini, swinging a sword” conversation.
I do role play, but I don’t do erotic role playing. I don’t share personal info in-game, beyond “Yum, this dinner turned out well” kind of stuff. Heck, I don’t even confirm that the real me is female. And yet, I get “What would you say, if I told you I more than like you.”
So other women that play MMOs, do you have this happen to you? I’m not talking about the idiot who decides the pretend to grope every female character, but the ones more like a high school crush.
I’m not looking for advice, because I could stop them, by being a bitchy player or being all business, but I don’t want to do that. I’m just wondering if other women have this happen to them.
Only the core group of guildies I run with know I’m female (if you play a male, you’re automatically assumed to be male!). All the guys in there are older and already attached, so I haven’t run into anything. I don’t admit to my gender in PUGs and don’t do voice chat with strangers.
My wife did. We left guilds over it. (Yes, they kept at it even after being told “You see this male avatar I’m always travelling with? HE’S MY RL SPOUSE. HE IS LOOKING AT MY PRIVATE CHAT WINDOW RIGHT NOW.” The desperate are difficult to communicate with.)
Not in a long time, mostly because I’m VERY careful about who I let know I’m actually truly female. Which seems totally odd, since I’m probably old enough to be a lot of player’s mother. But yeah, back when I wasn’t so careful, things could get odd.
Which is also why I really dislike the way that so many guilds nowadays seem to assume that everyone is on voice chat. First off, I’m not letting people know I’m a chick until I’m good and ready to. Secondly, I have to listen to people blabber on in real life too often - the last thing I want to do is have to do it in game.
Every guild I’ve joined so far in Guild Wars 2 has been totally silent in Guild Chat, except for the occasional spam of their Mumble/Teamspeak/whatever server details.
I’m not female, but every single female player I know has had this happen to them. It’s basically inevitable in an environment with lots of young (and let’s admit it, sometimes socially awkward) males and seemingly accessible females.
ETA: With the exception of the ones like kushiel that explicitly hide their gender. And even then I’ve seen one of the handful of people that knew the players gender develop a crush in at least one case.
Every female has it happen to them. I often pick a male char, not to hide my gender, but because if I have to look at someone, I’d rather look at a hot guy than a hot girl, but if people find out, it’s a tossup who gets there first - the crush or the guy who wants to sex you up.
You don’t even have to be a woman, it can be enough that your avatar is female. Or at least that used to be the case - I think its more common for males to play female characters these days.
Heh, no kidding. Just the other day in GW2 I had another player complement me on my character’s look. He took off, saying “If you were a real girl, I’d hit on you!”
I have had something like this happen exactly once: when I tried out a female Night Elf character. I was barely out of the starting area before some guy was trying to chat me up.
Other than that, I only play male characters, never reveal my gender until I know people well, and don’t voice chat with people I don’t know. It’s funny, when I joined my first real raiding guild, I pretended not to have a mic and raided with them for almost a year before I revealed. Several people told me “I was sure you were a guy.” I have a very male style of chatting, I’m told. The only person I revealed it to prior to that was one guy who I felt like I could trust (the mage lead for the raid), and it turned out I was right. He’s still a good friend.
In my current Secret World cabal (I’m the cabal-master), everybody thinks I’m male except my friends and so far I haven’t set them straight. I probably will at some point, though–they’re a pretty mature bunch.
I have zero patience for socially awkward guys or misogynistic guys. That’s probably why my primary WoW guild is LGBT, and most of the members are gay men. I get along great with gay men. They’re fun to talk to, I never have to worry that they’re going to develop a crush on me, they aren’t hung up on gender roles, and the guild chat can get as raunchy as we like with no concerns about ‘leading anyone on’. The members who aren’t gay men are either cool straight guys who are LGBT-friendly or lesbians who are already in relationships, and they’re all fun as well. I’m pretty sure I’d never make it in a regular raid guild populated by young hetero males.
Ok, I’m feeling a bit less weird now. I also am old enough to be some of these guys’ mother, but just last weekend, I had to have the talk, and I spent the rest of the evening feeling like I’d kicked a puppy.
I have RL male friends that play female characters, and they say they don’t have this happening to them.
So Ladies (RL or in game) what do you do? Do you tell them to f* off, add them to your ignore list, try to let them down easy, something else?
I’m male but have been heavily flirted with while playing female toons. Not too often, though, and come to think of it only in WoW – it hasn’t happened in Star Wars yet.
It was fun when I had a low-level female toon; guys were always trying to help me out by helping me with difficult mobs or giving me potions and stuff.
I always make it clear through conversation in the linkshell (guild) that 1) I’m female 2) I’m married and 3) I’m over 40.
Once that’s settled, I have no problem flirting/flirting back. They can have their crushes, but they know going into it that nothing will ever come of it, so caveat emptor.
Yes, in WoW. I usually pretend I’m a guy (or just don’t reply) when I get asked my gender in a pug. But guildmates and people I raid with know I’m female, because I don’t hesitate to speak in Vent. I have been on the receiving end of a lot of unfortunate attention because I have a good radio voice (working in a call center will do that), which I guess translates into perceived sexiness? A lot of that attention I’ve managed to deflect by saying I’m a very fat chick and not interested in long-distance relationships. Ever. Not even with Johnny Depp. But occasionally, I’ve allowed myself to be drawn into arguments with people who say I couldn’t possibly be fat, because I don’t “sound fat.” :rolleyes: Yeah okay, guy.
Interestingly (and unfortunately) enough, I temporarily raided on another server at the start of Cata, and a fat-fetishist/feeder latched onto me like a fucking barnacle. It was hard to put him on ignore because he was a tank and typed in raid chat kind of a lot… so. He was a creeper in general, easily the creepiest fucker I’ve had the misfortune to meet. It was made worse by the fact that he was absolutely fucking RELENTLESS with the flirtatious bullshit, but he was nice about it. Like he would never take no for an answer, but he wouldn’t get mad about it. He would just keep going. So okay, he wasn’t a nice guy–he was a creepy. But he was a nice creep, if that makes sense. This made it difficult to tell him to fuck off without feeling guilty. So goddamn slimy! He liked to flirt with every female past the point of comfort. But when he found out I was a fatty, he got seriously gross. He would talk about how much he wanted to roll my fat between his fingers (and a lot more that is literally unprintable). :vomitsmiley: Anyway, I ended up leaving the server because of that guy. It turned out well in the end, though. The leadership wouldn’t kick him because they needed him too much (having already geared him out extensively). The girls were unhappy. The non-creepy male members (lol) who knew what was going on were unhappy (which not everyone knew about, because all of this happened in whispers). The girls began leaving one by one… I was the first to go, mostly because he focused on me the hardest, I think. Anyway, inaction on the part of the guild leadership actually tore that guild apart. I was glad, 'cause fuck those fuckers!
I’ve become much better at rebuffing unwanted advances through the years. Usually refraining from responding works well enough. But not always, which is why being a bitch when necessary is a valuable life skill. That took me a while to learn, but I’m pretty good at it now.
There is an endless supply of douchey clueless boys playing online games, so ALL girl gamers have to deal with this at some point (whether it’s by being a bitch, or pretending to be a guy, or giving in to the attention). God, I hate the chicks who give into it and become guild princesses. Thankfully, my current guild is chill and awesome and lacking in immature idiots, so we don’t have that problem.
Back in my EQ days, I had a female warror. Round about level 10, a stranger ran up to her, and handed her an axe. That happened about 4 more times, with different strangers giving her axes, always axes. I did eventually get the hint, and she forever used axes after that. All of those were just random one time encounters, thankfully, and no unrequited crushes were involved.
I avoid getting hit on by not interacting with anyone – no guild/linkshell, no voice chat, I don’t raid or do PUGs, and I turn off trade chat. Fortunately, this is how I prefer it.
I’ve never MMO’d and it’s not exactly a crush, but I have had people flirt with me when I used this as my avatar in PokerStars cause it has to be one of my top 5 paintings ever. Ummm, look closely at a female before you conclude that she’s legal!
After (mumbledy) years playing WoW, I can say that of the dozens of female guildmates I played with, only two of them played male characters. And at least a dozen met long-term boyfriends/husbands/girlfriends as a result. I’m sure there was a fair amount of crushing going on (particularly when we had people join us in raids–there were a few ladies with just amazing voices, and all the (other) guys would be talking later about how gorgeous they must be just because their voices were so sexy…
This isn’t limited to MMOs. It’s a real problem in pretty much every game where the same players regularly encounter each other (such as the same regional servers for an FPS). It’s bad when a match is disrupted by morons harassing a girl and it’s bad when a match is disrupted by a girl who gets off on the attention.
The members who aren’t gay men are either cool straight guys who are LGBT-friendly or lesbians who are already in relationships, and they’re all fun as well. I’m pretty sure I’d never make it in a regular raid guild populated by young hetero males._-_The_Nut_Gatherers_(1882).jpg){kind=link}