Girly Pally - surprise, surprise - is a girl in RL too.
And one of the great things about downloading vent and buying a headset ("umm... for my friend," I told the clerk at Best Buy - Girly Pally being squarely in the WoW closet) was the realization that I'm not the only woman in WoW.
As my husband says, I'm one of 13, maybe even 14 girls who play WoW. ;)
Actually it's been awesome meeting some serious, fabulous women who WoW. And so far I've noticed some similarities among my virtual female friends.
First, they tend to be pretty drama-free. This may be because there are so few of them, and yes there is one girly mage I know who kicks up some controversy from time to time, but the major drama I've witnessed tends to be between guys.
They also tend to know their stuff. Again, this could be the group I run with, or just that I've known a lot more men than women in WoW - and I've known one major exception who couldn't seem to understand that you must move out of the fire or you're going to get burned (made me wonder how she cooks...) but I've noticed no major difference in skills between the boys and the girls. Actually, for a while the top geared player on our server (Grizzly Hills) was a holy girl pally.... sadly, not this holy girl pally!
And - they aren't tanks. Far and away, most of the women I've met in Azeroth are healers. There are a few dps, both ranged and melee (mages, rouges, and hunters mostly) - but resto druids and holy pallys seem to dominate with the XX chromosome set.
I've never met a female tank.
Sure, I've met guys who rolled girl tanks - but the voice on vent for that cute little warrior chick has always been male.
What's up with that?
Is it society? Is it the way we were raised? Are we women caving to cultural demands that we fill the role of nurture/healer, or is it just more fun to dps the heck out of a monster than worry about aggro? In a world where you can experiment with becoming something other than what you are - where you could even roll a different gender - it's interesting that so many women choose not to experiment with the traditional masculine roll of warrior/protector.
Girly Pally has decided to try bucking the system... I rolled a dranii warrior who has already tanked Stockades and Scarlet Monastery. ;)
What about you? Any girly tanks out there? What do you think about gender and its impact on our rolls (and roles) in the game?
*hand up* I tank! One of my co-main tanks is a feral druid girl as well. And we rock :)
ReplyDeleteI tank too, although not full time anymore, and there is another female tank in my guild. It's true that female tanks are somewhat of a rarety. I find it a shame.
ReplyDeleteMy latest 'main' alt is main spec tank, but i don't see myself making her my main any time soon. After 2 years of DPS (rather badly, I admit), I tried out a healer and now I love my druid to bits. My pally went OS holy too, but I'm tanking 99% of the time on her because: a) my holy gear sucks and I'm afraid to queue as dual spec; b) even when I do, I get put in as tank.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, one of my best WoW (female) friends is one of our tanks (also a pally)... and she's really good at it. One of our TBC tanks was also a girl - a girl with a very 'girly' voice, it made Vent a very funny place when we heard her being all polite and sweet while telling us to get the hell out from the boss's cleave.
P.S. I ended up here via Blog Azeroth, in case you were wondering - nice to meet another girl who enjoys the social side too. Most of the blogs written by girls that I've seen tend to focus more on raiding/theorycrafting.