Some years back I remember reading a news article about a college student who took advantage of some desperate male MMOers by pretending to be a sexy lady MMOer on his sexy Nightelf female toon, flirting with them and getting them to shower him in gold and in-game items. The article said that this guy was doing it as a social experiment, but I wasn’t buying it.
I bet you’ve heard stories like this pop up from time to time. Not everyone who is trans-tooned is rolling that way to take advantage of unwitting players. I know players on both sides of the gender fence who choose not to roll their own gender for various reasons.
I know plenty of females who don’t want people to know they’re girls. They can fly under the radar without anyone harassing them, male or female. It’s been my experience that female gamers can ruthlessly harass other females worse than men, so I can understand why girls might want to do this.
My ex-girlfriend always played male characters. She said she thought people in LFD and BGs were more likely to follow directions if they thought they were coming from a member of the male persuasion. This brings up interesting questions about the role gender plays in authority. I liked that we could be flirtatious and playful with each other while in randoms without making it obvious that we were not a heteronormative couple.
Plenty of folks (male and female) say they do it because they prefer the look 
of the in-game character models of the opposing gender. The troll female comes to mind when I think of notoriously terrible looking female models. Reading up for this article, many girls on the forums say that they play female but wouldn’t be caught dead playing one of the Worgen female models.
TimmyPowegamer: “They are trolls, they should look ugly and frumpy and hunched over like the males. Not pretty and upright like humans and elves. Same with Orcs.”
A lot of people hate the way armor looks on a specific gender. I personally am glad that blizzard stopped putting midriffs on female armor, but I think they could do a little better at differentiating it from the male armor models. I have heard guys make the argument that they don’t like the way cloth armor looks on male models. One guy told me he liked the way plate armor looked on his female toon’s back side.
Strych: “My college roomate had a toon named and modeled after his girlfriend. I think he spent more time oggling his toon though. When he finally got the ultimatum, he chose his digital GF over the analog.”
Do you find it strange when your male friends have female names for their female toons? Or do you think it’s just a normal part of the RP experience involved in the MMORPG? I would never judge the trans-tooned, I just want to get some insight on the reasons players roll the opposite gender. I find it fascinating that so much of this goes on in the MMO world.
porkchopsnholysauce 
