Back to the subject at hand: It is nearly impossible to prevent males of Alliance races from looking either grim or haggard—and even if you manage, they tend to look vacuous. It *is* impossible to make males of most Horde races look less than grotesque: Although blood elves are an exception, they have the same issue as Alliance males…with the added option of looking *petulant.* So I would argue that the design issues aren’t limited to female characters.

If they can’t even get all the base models right, they have absolutely no business trying to make everything work for dozens of different variations upon the base models.

I would like the choice between playing a HERO and create an Avatar that resembles Conan or whatever, but I would also like the choice of creating a toon that resembles myself or a family member.

DAOC and Asheron’s call had the toons that tended to look the most realistic. WOW and EQ are at the other end of the spectrum.

But then look at society and how we really view beauty/ugliness. The best example I can think of is the TV show “Ugly Betty” where the girl is actually quite pretty and they make her “ugly” by giving her braces and glasses.

When I was younger, I probably would have played a Dwarf female, or a Tauren. Now, though, I don’t want to play a dwarf female because, frankly, if I want to watch a dumpy female running around, I’ll go out and run around. The more I resemble the plainer models irl, the less I want to play one in a game.

WoW does have a problem with stereotyped models, but it’s not the female ones. People are just so used to flapping their jaws- they’ve been doing it since the first Everquest box eight years ago- about misogyny and boobies and sweaty virgin geeks in MMOs that they don’t realize that WoW’s female models are rather low key in comparison. Four of the original races are “attractive,” at least 7s on the 10 scale, but another four- Tauren, Orcs, Dwarves, Gnomes- are unattractive. None of them are so because of an EQ-sized rack and you rarely find a piece of “armor” that wears like a bikini on females.

The “problem,” such as it is in WoW, is with the male models. All the models, except gnomes and undead, are roid-raging ‘ceps-and-pecs machines, which makes it difficult to “fully realize” most fantasy archtypes. Sure, I laugh with the best of them at the anime fans and greasy goth teens who are dismayed at their inability to play an angst-machine or a Japanese paragon, but even I’ve been frustrated at the lack of range in Blizzard’s character palette.

The fact is, WoW is the way it is not just because of pervert marketers, but because it is a Warcraft game. Warcraft has a certain artistic style to it, which involves massive muscles, mag-shoulders, and meat-cleavers. Females are smaller. Blizzard didn’t pay attention to “the industry standards” of realism when they were designing their cartoony landscape, so I don’t see why we should expect them to either enforce taste or enable a vast psychological rainbow in their character creation. Boot up WC3 and look at that poorly split baguette hanging off Jaina’s torso, and be glad they muted the style as much as they did.

In the end, I’m really waiting for a next generation fantasy MMO which allows for a higher level of character avatar customization, from base bodytype to redoing the gear. That would solve a lot of arguments right then and there. If someone wants a realistic character with realistic armor, that would be their choice. If someone wants a Red Sonja in chainmail bikini or Conan in loincloth, that’s their option.

Me, I click through that stuff as fast as I can to get to the pvp.

Now, given, my main is male gnome…when you’re a gnome, your gear is somewhat less obvious because it is also small…as are you… But I don’t see the armor in WoW as being overly revealing for females, either.

My next-most-advanced character is a warlock, female human. She manages to look quite scholarly in her robes. No cheesecake, no pouting…

I’d love to see every game with CoH/SWG level character customization, but I don’t think WoW is sexist. I think people tend to see what they want to see.