GamerDNA Blog - Latest Comments in Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Kal — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:39:57 -0000

You have to keep in mind that this is just a general random sample of people who play WoW. Just because you or someone you know goes against what this article is saying, it doesn't make it invalid. I read a tanking article written by a woman who plays an Orc Protection Warrior. Plus those of who are asking if this is based off character gender or 'real life' gender. Right above the second chart there it says "(Note: Gender of the actual player, NOT the gender of the in-game character)"

But yeah. very nice article.

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Aries — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:44:03 -0000

I think those statistics about which races are predominant amongst female players is hilarious. My two mains (one each for Horde and Alliance), which were my first choices, are a Dwarf and an Orc, and I have practically zero desire to play a Human or Blood Elf.

I must be stranger than I thought.

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Liz Danforth — Sun, 17 May 2009 10:39:57 -0000

I've recently closed an extensive survey on WoW skills translating to real life, and part of my demographics came up with about 38% of the players as female. Looking at Nick Yee's research from a number of years ago (Daedalus Project), his numbers were around 20% female as I recall. I suspect WoW's popularity and acceptability is bringing in more and more female players to the MMORGs, which as a long-time tabletop gamer myself I find a real joy. (By the way I'm ESAK and have played every race and class. Alliance main is human male mage, Horde main troll shammy female.)

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

TRESA — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:25:38 -0000

Generally I do not post on blogs, but I would like to say that this post really forced me to do so! really nice post.

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Manachi — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 08:29:22 -0000

Fantastic article - very interesting. Thanks for the effort!

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Sleutel — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:37:30 -0000

For the record...

Female, register as Achiever-Killer on Bartle's, and my main is a Night Elf Protection Warrior (currently my guild's MT). As for those races most women avoid? The first toon I ever rolled was Undead, and the second was an Orc. The big reason my main is Alliance is because of the people I currently play with.

Good luck predicting ME from these stats... :D

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

ooopinionsss — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:58:59 -0000

How you think when the economic crisis will end? I wish to make statistics of independent opinions!

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Archael — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:50:17 -0000

Soon 50% of the class breakdown will be the class Death Knight and the other 50% will be the other 9 classes combined.

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Bree — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:36:14 -0000

What I'd like to see in the class/gender breakdowns is something regarding talent spec. For instance, out of the large percentage of women who play druids, how many are resto, how many are boomkin, and how many are feral? Out of those who play priests, how many are holy, disc, or shadow? How many women see themselves as "killers" or "achievers" and does this correspond to their spec choice (i.e. enhancement shaman vs. resto shaman)?

I think it would also be useful to overlay that set of results onto what races are available for each class, to see if there are any correlations. For example, shaman is the only healing-capable class that lacks a higher percentage of female players. Does this percentage shift between factions? I am a woman and play a female troll shaman (caster dps)-- I know zero women who play female orc and tauren shamans and 1 or 2 other female trolls (one played by a man) that are active in high end raiding guilds on my server. However, I see many, many female draenei shamans on Alliance side, played by both men and women. Is there a higher percentage of people (or women in particular) playing shamans Alliance side, since there is a "pretty" race option?

And while I'm at it, how does the data change when we separate players based on their preference for PVP or PVE play?

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

grend — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 04:33:07 -0000

@rolken given that they stated that men outweigh women 5 to 1 in the wow population 20% OF MEN would be a greater % OF THE WHOLE POPULATION, and 19% OF WOMEN would be a much smaller amount than 19% OF THE WHOLE POPULATIOON. geddit?

@ IAMSHADOW
hunters. Ive got a few friends that stoped playing altogether because hunters were when played properly just really boring.The perfect hunter rotation at 70 when raiding is completed with one button push.... :insert sad emote of your choosing:

@ anyone who said "gurr gurr women characters can be men IRL gurr gurr" take the time to read the article before you jump to erroneouse conclutions.

for Sanya, thanks a lot for putting this together, i found it very interesting and having played myself a lot of your charts agreed with my personal experience e.g. overpopulation of hunters QQ, more RL women (yeah yeah how do i know they'r women) playing certain classes etc.

Im very very interested to see a confirmed alliance races/horde races break down soon. -Grend draenor

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

IAMSHADOW88 — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:07:39 -0000

Very good indeed. I'm very excited to see that the Hunter class had the most percentage, because, if anyone has played WoW before, the Hunter class is the most interesting and basically "da bomb." So, yes very good breakdown on the male and female charts too. I give you my props and keep up the good work. "Hunters will rule WoW till the end of time!" -Feelmypain
Burning Legion Server

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

IconX — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:51:44 -0000

To #4: Malsorian, and especially #24: Daviesmith (since the answer was given in the post RIGHT BEFORE [#23]) ...

Look at the note after the 2nd paragraph (just before the chart showing the breakdown of genders & classes):

"Next, let’s look at the gender breakdown (Note: Gender of the actual player, NOT the gender of the in-game character):"

For them do to this much research and assume that what you play in-game is your actual gender is utterly absurd. Why do this much research without knowing your population base? Looking at this much research, you should assume they based this on ACTUAL gender; which, in fact, is what they stated in the article itself.

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Daviesmith — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:25:08 -0000

Malsorian is right on the money. While the character may be female, the player most times is not. Women do play WoW, for sure (my wife does, and so does her best friend) however, this does not mean all female toons have a real girl behind the monitor.

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Sam Houston — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:38:57 -0000

All of the female/male data is based on if the person playing the game is actually a female or male. It has *nothing* to do with if you are a male or female ingame.

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Sundra — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:09:57 -0000

To those saying he could have gathered data elsewhere and not just assuming female toons = female players I ask how would he get such data? Account information is private thus making it theoretically impossible for him to have used the actual account information to come up with the charts.

So I agree that the data is not accurate since a lot of female characters are played by men, for the exact reasons he attributed those choices to a female choice. Even men find that female dwarves are not very appealing and even men would find it sexier to play, say, a female Night Elf or a female caster character.

It can't also be discarded that some women might actually choose to play a male character.

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Rolken — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 03:35:02 -0000

"the percentage of players who play a human is at 38% of the total playerbase, even as it’s 20% of all men and 19% of all women."

This doesn't make any sense if you put any thought into it. There's no way the percentage for the population can be larger than the percentage of both its component parts. It looks like you forgot to divide by 2 in there, putting it right about where it belongs, at the same level as the genders.

Also, the killer-achiever comparison doesn't check out. 18.5% and 18.7% might be almost the same, but 18.5% and 28.7% are very not. And given those flagrant errors, I'm guessing the character gender = player gender accusation is also on the money. Oh well, it was a nice idea.

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Mantis137 — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:45:25 -0000

I'd be curious to see how something like this looks when applied to EVE Online. Considering it's a global playerbase on one single server, and with the mass array of possible 'career paths', might be interesting.

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

PSC — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:30:07 -0000

The statistician in me would love to see:

- a couple of paragraphs on how you collected the data. Presumably this is from your DNA profiles, but it's not explicit in the article, and the absolute population sizes aren't indicated
- some comment on the self-survey bias. Would "more active" gamers be more likely to register with your service? How will this bias the results?
- I'd be pretty sure that there are some "definite preferences" in your more detailed graphs down the bottom. These more detailed breakdowns might well have some statistically significant properties, depending on population sizes. For instance it's likely that "killers" prefer undead and orcs.

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Trapper Markelz — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:03:11 -0000

I just inserted a note about the numbers. Our chart provider crashed, so we had to redo the charts and the queries reflected today's numbers which has produced a surge in Bartle tests... which changed the percentages. So we are adjusting the article to reflect the new charts. Sorry about that. I guess that is what we get for trying to host the charts somewhere else! :)

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Slacker — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:18:37 -0000

Your population numbers are misleading. In WoW there are 4 completely different play types that all hate each other; Resulting in 4 very different groups of players.

On PvE servers 64% play Alliance 36% Horde
On PvP servers 40% play Alliance 60% Horde
On RP-PvE servers 60% play Alliance 40% Horde
On RP-PvP servers 46% play Alliance 54% Horde

Average them out and you will get 54% Alliance and 46% Horde.

But on anything but a RP-PvP server odds are you are going to see a major slant to one side or the other.
(My source is warcraftrealms.com)

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Eddy — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:00:28 -0000

Yeah, that data just looks really wrong considering only 1/5 of players on WoW (20% from my understanding) are female. I imagine rp servers can be a little higher.

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

JibrilBenes — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:15:01 -0000

To the commenter who tried to nullify this whole article:

I did not see anywhere that he was talking about the sex of the character and not the sex of the player.

To the writer of the article:

You did state that you grouped races by Alliance and then Horde, however, Blood Elf is the first race on the left, separated from the other Horde races on the right. Looks like an alphabetical sort from my end.

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

finnstoney — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:10:20 -0000

Stats listed below don't match the chart above
"I find it fascinating that in WoW, Killers and Achievers are almost exactly even. Explorers have a whopping 43% of the pie, leaving 14% for Socializers –" but chart shows Explorer 39.5, Killer 28.7, Achiever 18.5, Socializer 13.4

Also, Blood Elf are Horde and Night Elf are Alliance...
"I’ve grouped the Alliance races first, followed by Horde."
Was the title switched or were they out of order?

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Reinforcements — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:00:40 -0000

@ #4 - Malsorian, what makes you think they're going by character gender? I don't see anything about how they gathered this data, though I could have missed it. It seems like what you're saying is REALLY OBVIOUSLY TRUE, and I dunno, I can't believe they'd just assume female avatar = female player. That would be stupid. Anyway, they must have used some sort of poll in order to get the Bartle types, so I'd think they got player gender the same way.

Re: Bartle, Gender, and WOW

Trapper Markelz — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:53:07 -0000

Yay charts are back. Go Steve (Fatty Chubs). I guess we crashed chartGizmo. :)