Why I play a female character... Well, I'll give you the story and let you decide which answer I should vote on. I wasn't planning on doing so when I started with Ryzom. In previous online games I had always played male characters, had in fact always considered playing a character of the opposite gender to be 'wrong', as it was misleading to the other players. Recently, after having been introduced to the concept of roleplaying, I changed my opinion about this. It's a role playing game after all; players create characters to play in an imaginary world, and the character doesn't have to be a virtual copy of the player behind it. Still, I didn't think this way of playing was for me, so my first character to set foot in Atys was as always male. Two weeks into playing, after having met various female characters played by males and learning that a female friend was playing a male character, I became curious as to how crossgender playing would be different, and I decided to give it a try. Thus Marelli came into being mostly as an experiment. My expectation was that playing with her would feel completely awkward and I wasn't planning on ever getting her off the training island. But as it turned out, I had more fun playing with her than with my first character. Mostly this was because my male characters always end up being game versions of myself: When playing with them I'm not playing a character, I'm just playing myself in a different world. Playing a female made me constantly aware of the fact that my character is not me. Unlike with my male character, I soon found myself thinking up stories about who she was, where she came from, and so on. It was a much more immersive gameplay experience to not only play in a strange world but also with a strange character. Yes, I do know it's perfectly possible to create a character of your own gender and still have them be very different from yourself, but I guess I'm just lazy, and my character being of the opposite gender forced me to realize I was playing a character.
So much for my reasons to create a female character and my reasons to make her my main. Nowadays, not wanting to start over again is enough reason to continue playing with her, even though at times I wish I was playing a male character again. This wish comes mostly from finding it very difficult to decide how to act towards the other inhabitants of Atys. Ideally, I would like to act in character, so act how I think Miarelli would act. But I know that a lot of players out there don't roleplay, and I wouldn't want to make them believe I'm female myself. (This isn't just a problem with gender, by the way. As another example, she's Matis, so my intention was once to play her a bit arrogant, but in reality I rarely do so because I don't want players to think I myself am like that. Basicly, it's just the ic/ooc problem that has been discussed before, but it seems that gender lies particularly sensitive with a lot of people.) The result of this not knowing how to act is that I end up doing my best to avoid forming any relationships, which is not how I'd like to play a mmorpg. The whole purpose of these games is to play together with other people, after all. So... yeah, I'm still kind of exploring the whole crossdressing thing, I'm not at all sure I'd make a female character again if I was starting over, but since I don't want to start over I'm stuck with one.
vinnyq wrote:But really, what I meant by 'weird' was, as in *you* feel weird for having that gender switch inside your own head of the other player, even with already knowing that player is a "guy behind the girl", if you will.
I'd say if I'm in game, that means I'm acting towards the character. Which means female characters are treated as female, male characters as male, regardless of the players behind them. Only if I was talking to a player out of character might I treat the player by their own gender rather than by their character's. Like I said before, this did feel weird to me when I just started playing mmorpgs and met crossgender players for the first time. But after getting a little more familiar with roleplaying, I've learned to seperate the player from the character, and it doesn't feel weird to me in the least anymore. Usually my mind can quickly and automaticly switch between the ingame setting (where there are no players and only the characters exist) and the outgame one. The only thing that still feels weird to me is dealing with players who don't make that separation. Like when a male player controls a female character but displays obvious male behavior. Or when someone is constantly referring to a female character as 'he'.
Don't worry, I haven't disappeared completely - just having a little break, and keeping the subs going as planned 
