A Word of Advice to the Ladies Re: Character Creation

Yeah, when a character that is dressed up like some sort of gothic hooker named Sister Mercy walks up to you and you are a human male it is TOTALLY inappropriate to show any interest in her.

That is if you have been castrated

Seriously, sexuality is part of the human experience. The trick is to realize that and work with it appropriately instead of trying to deny it.

P.S. I don't get the reference to Pygmalion at all: does your wife play Henry Higgins and teach you to speak properly? Perhaps a Hermaphroditus complex or even Achilles who cross-dressed a bit?

I must be old-fashioned but I prefer real life women over anything computerized. I like adult humor just as much as the next person, but saying that someone is a human male is a poor excuse for some of the immature conduct.

I do agree with this

I've always wondered how showing sexual interest is considered to be immature? More like the other way around. Pre-teens are the ones who aren't ready to show it due to a lack of certain hormones... they are literally immature, at least physically.

...most of her complaints were about them asking if she'd like to team. A simple no will usually suffice and if it is ignored there is always squelch

I don't think you put enough stock in the power a name can have. Who would a man rather date 'Sister Fate' or 'Munter R Hidious.' Think about this now, using Sister adds that forbidden fruit element of catholasiam. Then add something like Fate, Death or other taboo state well your in a world of harasment. Just try it create 'Munter R Hidious' I bet no man will be interested.

I have 4 characters

Manticker Swaith - Warrior/Ranger - Male - RP
Hadreen Balthazaa - Elementalist/Warrior - Female - RP
Fayth Harpie - Necromancer/Mesme - Female - RP
Cobweb Suelanie - Ranger/Monk - Female - RP

I expect Fayth will get the most harassment, and Hadreen will get the least.

Just try a differant name, something less forbidden fruit and more rotten fruit.

gabby

and

That's where people seem to have this wrong. I have no problem with mature kidding (anyone who's seen my sense of humor probably knows that) or wanting to team -- my concern is that some of the interest was intense to a creepy extent and that "no" didn't suffice. Plus, I didn't bring it up to complain to everyone about it (I can handle it), I simply thought that others might appreciate the forewarning.

Anyway, I'm tired of having to explain myself. From here on in, say what you want.

Having played probably in the area of 100 male and 100 female characters in these games over the years, I've been through all of this more times than you can imagine. Add in the 100s of people I've teamed with both male and female and I've probalby seen it all, from guys acting like women to get advantage, to both women and men looking for (and finding) actual marriage partners in these games, to cyber sex... yes, all of it.

My point is that my own behaviors determined the outcome to a much higher degree than my avatar.

Dealing with this did take me a while and I no longer play female avatars at this point as it is too much effort.

In any case, learning how to use the /ignore function in all of these games is essential because some people ARE creeps and that will be true no matter what your avatar.

Good luck in GW and have fun!

Don't waste your energy trying to get through to those that can only see it one way. Even if I don't share your same concerns, having started a thread a while back about the maturity of the players in the last beta, I do appreciate your intentions.

there is a /ignore in this game isn't there?

I always thought that was gods gift to mature gamers. Now if it just worked for dancers too that would be great!

All of my characters are generally small, except for my elementalist which I made tall. Just add the people to ignore if they are harrassassing you.

all my characters are female and as short as i can get them. the only undue attention i get is in game when i play my monk, but that's from opponents.

One point I'd like to add: Ignore might work well to stop the chat-harrassment, but that doesn't make the creep go away. Here's a scenario:

Let's say you're playing a female character, and you are in town waiting for a couple of your guild-mates to arrive, so you can set up a team. You start wandering around, maybe over to the Outfitter, when some guy starts chatting you up. You politely let the guy know you aren't interested in chatting or teaming with them (waiting for friends), but the guy won't lay off.

So you Ignore them. But now you are trying to get your team set up, making changing Districts more of a pain, and this guy is following you around. Everywhere you look, there he is.

Point is, harrassment comes in many forms, and chat is only one of them. Forcing someone to change districts borders on Griefing, and we should not simply expect a player with female characters to accept this sort of behavior.

I'm a guy (albeit not a creepy one), and I totally understand where Sister mercy is coming from on this. I have three male characters and one female character. Guess which one gets chatted up all the time, while the others are pretty much ignored? Makes being a Solo player a real pain, when guys won't stop trying to cajole me into teaming my female Elementalist/Mesmer with them.

"No" means "No", guys.

I think SisterMercy is trying to say that it is pointless ignoring one guy, because you wouldn't normaly see the same guy twice, but you could get harrassed by a guy in every town. That simply means youd have to type in a name or two everytime you walk into a town.



A little of advice cant hurt, but you guys are almost offended by it. Lighten up.





(SubNote: I dont stalk chicks in this game, but if they dont move I take a picture of them )

I just think this is a computer game and there's no such thing as stalking in a computer game. There is, however, something like paranoia in a computer game.

The only one I talk dirty to in gw is my girlfriend

think of it this way people - if you are getting harassed, think of the character of the person harassing you. They have so little hope at getting a girl in the outside world that all they can do is follow a female character (they may not even be sure that the PLAYER is female - hell, ALL of my characters are women) and hope that they may get one token of affection. This kind of behaviour makes me feel ashamed to be a "geek"

So what would you call having the same person follow you around for a few hours after repeated requests of asking them to leave? True its just a game, but the other people across the monitor are real people and not to be "toyed" with like this. It might be fun for the guy who is "stalking" the girl, but honestly he is ruining her game experience by doing it. Online games are not meant to have fun by making others misrable but by having fun together by helping each other and playing together.

but they cannot do that. They cannot find out where you are, unless you tell them; if they keep sending you messages, you ignore them, its that simple.

That is one of the best features in this game. You can't be followed into an instance. And if you are in a common area, with the press of a button you are in the same common area but in instance 37 of it. Now they have no idea which of 50 some common area instances you went to.

There is most definitely in-game stalking, and there are plenty of reported incidents where in-game stalking slowly turned into real-life stalking.

Imagine someone messaging you on an instant messenger asking you to explain why you didn't talk to him last night when you were playing from 2 to 3. When you never gave him your IM name. There are enough insane people out there, paranoia is not necessarily a bad thing.

that's just weird, not in-game stalking. If stalking limits itself to that game, and in particular, that very instance, this is not a big deal. Seriously, if you put them on ignore and switch instances, how can they know where you are? If you haven't given them your IM, how can they talk to you on it?

Trust me, I know what real life stalking is. It's very scary. But if you're referring to a game and using the word stalking, something's wrong with you, and it's more of an insult to people who have experienced stalking, that you are using that term for such a far cry from what it really stands for.

It's paranoia, nothing more.

its just sad when things like this come up. makes me wanna go back to singleplayer baldurs gate for life

but seriousely. Ignore and switching districts. They cant follow you, they cant talk to you = they dont exist. Problem solved.