Do you play the opposite gender?

[WilhelmWhite]

Nope. I'm a male, and I've always preferred playing male characters. There's nothing wrong with people who do enjoy playing opposite genders, though. If that's what floats your boat, more power to you. Just not my cup of tea.

[MOZZYSTAR]

Female IRL, play as male character mostly because I don't wanna see some chick's behind all through the game.

I feel you. LOL

I play a few female characters, as I feel the same as some others on this thread do. A character is an entity, nothing more. Though, I do get a little weirded by the catcalling sometimes, but I get it sometimes on my male characters as well, so... /shrug. I do RP on my female characters, and I get a little weirded out when, after someone finds out my real gender, they still speak to me OOCly as though I were female. I used to RP with another guy playing a female character who, after learning my real life gender, still called me kitty and other cutesy names. It kinda made me feel like they thought I was homosexual, or maybe bi, or bi-curious, which I'm actually Kinsey 0 Heterosexual irl. So it didn't quite sit right with me.

I can also understand this greatly. ^ While there's nothing wrong with other sexualities/orientations, I think the main issue you're trying to express is the blurring of IC/OOC in OOC contexts, which I can totally understand. I've been in similar situations where people would continue to treat me as my character in OOC context (off FFXIV as I don't RP on MMOs) and it was rather uncomfortable. Sometimes it takes a little bit of clarifying, sometimes not...

[The_NPC]

I do, as in I play fem avi's while being male IRL, my "excuse" goes way back to Fable 3 on Xbox 360: went to play co-op with my best friend & we started the game 1st time together, with no clue how co-op worked for it just that we could play "Couch same-screen Co-op" since my profile & game saves at the time was on his console, the "campain" was techically his (but the avi I got was saved as mine to use solo... as I found out later) basically game gave me a fem avi while he got a male... continued solo with her, enjoyed it, & thus got a mental condition to use fem avi's for all 3rd person capable game since, until Destiny on PS4 were my "Males for 1st person games" rule finally died, probably in a horrible glimmer explosion (not sure if thats a good or bad way to go honestly)

lite-RP info , even thou I don't RP, FF14 avi is techically the same avi I used in a PS3 game called White Knight Chronicles (they had Void gates to a void zone, I asume she fell into the void & landed in Eorzea)

[TruebladeNuke]

Thanks to my experiences in previous MMO's, I play as both genders. That said, I wasn't expecting to main as a catgirl in this game. Fun story time!

Before this game, I played Guild Wars (1st MMO ever), Dungeon Fighter Online, Vindictus, and Elsword. (The latter two I only messed around on a bit) The latter three games in particular are what helped make me not really care about what gender my character is in an MMO game. Because in those three games, if you wanted to have a particular play style for the game, you HAD to choose a particular character, and that said character could potentially be the opposite gender of you. But even before the latter three games, I was making female characters even in Guild Wars just for the sake of being different per character, as you had to make new characters anyway if you wanted to main as a different job. Part of the reason why was because I was also in the process of thinking up additional OC characters for my own little web series that I used to work on a lot, thus explaining some of the female alts I've made. My main character in Guild Wars was a male Warrior though.

So when I finally got around to playing this game, (at the very strong urging of one of my friends, who is a known game hopper to the point of which I should have realized he'd keep doing that and I'd get much farther ahead of him in this game, lol) I was basically jumping in to this game under the assumption that I'd have to make several alt characters for different jobs. And I had already done that, with every intent of my Midlander Male Hyru being the main character among the ones I made. But when I started, said friend was just starting as well, so I figured I'd have one of my alts tag along with him under the assumption that it'd be best to have the said character be "that character who's roughly around the same level as that of said friend at all times." ... that character being "Felicia Meracle"... the one who would suddenly become my main down the road.

Once I got to the point of which the game told me I could pick up different jobs, and actually pick up ALL of them on a single character, I was like "Wat? I can do that?" So I started doing that with Felicia while still making progress in the story. Around that time, the FC friend I usually team up with 95% of the time in all future runs we've been making in this game just picked up the game himself. (And far more attenative to gettings done in a game compared to the friend that suggested for me to pick up this game so that we could play together, lol) Next thing I knew, my said "alt" was traveling with the more recently joined friend far more often.

Skip forward several years later, and it's basically become too late for me to turn around at this point. I've literally done just about everything on this character, and I don't feel like going through everything again (yet) on a different character. The biggest reason why I consider it too late to turn around though is that the character Felicia Meracle is how everyone quickly identifies me in game now. Thinking about how jarring it would be to some of the friends on my friends list if I used the name change service and a fantasia potion to become a Midlander Male Hyru now days, I just decided to roll with being a catgirl for this game. Besides, I hardly ever get to play as catgirl anyway across all games I play, so bonus points to that. Also bonus points to the fact that apparently, I have good fashion sense for this female Miqo'te I'm playing as.

On a different note, this is actually why I'm really hoping for the Dancer job to come in to this game as a melee healer unit. Because based on the lore I made for this particular cat girl for my own little series, Dancer as a healer unit would be the most fitting job for her to be in this game.

Please SE. ;-;

[Iscah]

I'm female and my primary character is female, but I do have alts of both genders.

This being my first real multiplayer game, I find it's a funny line between "playing as a character" and "playing as a representation of myself".

I have no issue playing the story part of the game as any of my characters - I'm used to single-player games where you're stepping into the role of a set character, and their personality is much more important than appearance for making me 'identify' with them.

On the other hand, I feel a bit strange interacting with other people as my male alt. Even though none of my characters look like me, it feels like gender is on a different level of how other people will perceive and interact with me/the character? Though it might also be a matter of familiarity as he's the only one of my three characters that isn't in an FC or other social situations, so not being regularly used as an "avatar" rather than a "character".

(Though I'll use first-person pronouns just for my main character and third-person pronouns when talking about either of my alts, so there's a bit of a disconnect there too. It's weird.)

[Stellafreyja]

Yes, and the sole reason for it is that female characters have the better costumes/glamour options. (And male characters are boring)

[hynaku]

I play both genders. Male tanks I like looks of the best and healers I like looks of female outfits the best. Casters they both look good so it toss up there.

[GetFoesReqd]

Female IRL, play as male character mostly because I don't wanna see some chick's behind all through the game.

Basically this but backwards. I stared at dude butts all the way through Asheron's Call (such as they were in that game) and WoW, until I could roll a female draenei. Then, that was the beginning of the end I'm afraid. In 14, I only have one male alt out of...well, a lot more than a couple of alts, and I mainly rolled him out of respect for a character I've been toting around for 20 years in dozens of games. I can also blame WoW for my altoholism, even when it is entirely unneeded.

Also, for all the complaints some people have about butts, the characters certainly look better overall here than they do in WoW, and WAY better than AC. If we could just get that slider some time, now...*pre-emptively ducks flying objects*

[Corfish]

Male IRL. I used to primarily play female characters for two reason:

1.) Especially in older games they had better customization items 99% of the time.

2.) Being in the closet causes you to do silly things, like "I LIKE PLAYING GIRLS BECAUSE I'D RATHER STARE AT GIRL BUTTS!"

After I came out I started playing male characters more often, and most modern MMOs are much better about offering men more diverse and interesting customization options than they used to be.

[AskaRay]

I'm female and I play as a male character. I could never play "myself" in a video game, it's too weird to me. I like playing as "characters", even if I don't roleplay (which I don't often since I'm terrible at it). And I joined the game for cat boys so here I will play a cat boy as my main probably forever!