Dude (Looks Like A Lady)

I recently posted about my on going struggles with Tempest Keep, and I kindly got some hints and tips from the Grumpy Elf and from a fellow Guildy, Diana. Now Diana has posted comments before and I wasn't entirely sure they were one of the same. This time Diana posted as Raffles / Diana leaving me with no doubt as to who had commented.

Now I am 99% sure that Diana is actually a man and is the partner of the former Guild Master / Mistress. Now to be quite honest I had no idea that anyone from the Guild actually read this blog because I have never really promoted it in Guild Chat, but I do have a link on Facebook. Which if anybody wants to befriend me on Facebook they are more than welcome.

The point of this post is really to empathise that we have no idea about the people behind the pixels, but as I am on PvE server and a Role Playing server, I generally accept people at face value in Guild Chat. I am almost sure that I can even point Diana out in a photograph, because he uses a real account on Facebook and not like me who hides behind my internet persona. One of the reasons I do that is because I am of an age were people are slightly wary of a 40 something male who spends most of his spare time playing and writing about a computer game, and the irony is that my brother makes a living as a professional Chess Player and can freely flaunt his activities.

Now I have occasionally written about my friends who my wife befriended whilst playing the game, because I think they felt sorry for her. Both of them used to play only female characters and I would quite often get them mixed up in my head, and it was a godsend when we started using Ventrillo to communicate instead of party chat. I once asked him why he only played women in game, and is response was that he spent hours looking at the backside of his character and preferred to look at the female form rather than the male version. All of this is ironic because he usually played druids and spent most the game as a Big Bear Butt or a Gnarly Tree.

My wife always used to say that we had no idea who we are talking to in game, and that sweet teenage boy who was struggling with his exams, could easily be a hairy arsed trucker called Dave. In fact my wife came a cropper with that saying when it turned out that one of the Guildies was a trucker from Sweden.

I have no issue with people playing a character of the opposite sex, in fact I suggest you try it just to witness how men (boys) treat women very differently in this game. I personally have 6 female alts and only 5 male characters.

 

I remember before going to University, that I had the opportunity to be whoever I wanted to be and could make up a stories to accompany my new self. Invariably we all settle for the same person we are and have always been. Whilst still being largely anonymous on the internet and in game, we still exude enough of ourselves to let people see the real person behind the pixels.