Originally Posted by August
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My wife played WoW with me at a competitive level for 3 years. I was the guild leader for a well-known, highly-ranked horde US guild from classic (molten core) -> TBC (black temple / hyjal).
I gotta say that people's reaction to her being a woman was a huge obstacle for her, myself, and ultimately lead to her quitting the game.
Story time? Story time.
It started innocently enough. We were in a guild that was originally formed in WC3 that was the first guild to down Onyxia. Leader was an asshat, we reformed. That leader was an asshat, and then we reformed again. I was elected leader. I modeled the guild after the only successful guild I had been in to date - a guild on Veeshan server in EQ called Primus Exodus.
Around the second reform my wife (then just a girlfriend) had started to play to spend more time with me - we were doing a long distance thing, and in addition to nightly calls we could play the game together.
It was her first MMO and she ended up being very decent - she wasn't a pro player by any means, but she caught up quickly playing a warlock.
When she hit max level, i knew she could raid - I'd seen her play in all the dungeons up to raid, and we were critically short on warlocks. If you played during molten core, you would know how essential warlocks were in so many battles. I petitioned to let her move to from a 'casual' rank to a 'raider' rank. This is where things started their downward trend that would eventually culminate in me and my wife quitting the game.
At first it was just called out as blatant favoritism. "The guild leader's whore" - this was a term that people used. Mainly behind my back, but of course I would find out. We were on progression mobs which entailed many, many wipes. The overreaction to any wipe caused by her, in comparison to the multitude of wipes caused by a LOT of our raiding members, was out of this world. There would be disproportionate bitching and moaning anytime she got interrupted before a banish or heaven forbid she forget to cast soulstone.
It then rollercoastered into her being 'bad all the time'. This was really before the advent of DPS meters, and people would complain that she was doing her rotation wrong or not pulling her weight. This was actually a catalyst to make dps meters 'mandatory'. When doing so, we discovered something magical - of all the warlocks, she was typically the top dps. Hooray! Problem solved? Not even close.
After she had established her 'right to raid' - a feat that literally no one else was put through, she then had to deal with creepers. People would send her suggestive messages alllll the time. There was a group of people in guild that would make alts and ask her inappropriate questions. We had several people end up getting kicked out of our guild because of this ongoing behavior - people really seemed to have a problem with her, despite the fact that she rarely, if ever, talked in vent, always showed up, on time, to raids, and never caused any drama beyond the typical loot-drama that accompanies a DKP system.
When TBC came out we all leveled up and she decided to reroll into a new class. She had the alt, a shaman, already geared up from alt runs.
At the time, she was playing a very unpopular spec - the 'elemental shaman'. Those of you who might remember, there was a time when ele shamans only had 1 instant, no DoTs, and no way to cast while they moved. Blizzard has since rectified this issue, but the overarching complaint was that on movement based fights (read: all) ele shaman just couldn't keep up. Analysis showed them bottom of DPS, just below boomkins.
So we got to raiding shortly after TBC released, Karazhan, and that's when the shit storm blew up once again. Coming in at 6th place, even though she was off by maybe a half percent of total dmg from 5th, was a huge confidence killer. She was ridiculed for being 'bad' at her class. Melee shamans were way outperforming at this point, and her contribution was being downplayed. Never mind the fact that she was part of a group that was server first to clear Kara - that she played a class with tangible benefits to our caster dps -- that she had clutch instant heals when needed -- that she provided bloodlust and never fucked up -- her marginally less dps than the mage was enough for her to get tormented by members of our guild. It goes without saying that on times she raided with 'pugs' she was number 1 dps by a wide margin.
Convinced of her inability to play as a girl, people started openly bashing her whenever I wasn't online -- in guild chat, in private message, etc. When I logged on, it would magically stop.
Eventually we had to give up. She couldn't log on without me being on. It got to the point where I didn't want to log on, so she couldn't either. I ended up mailing the entirety of our guild bank to the next in command, and deguilded myself, and quit WoW.
In our entire raiding history, she was the only openly female raider in our guild. It was my experience that she was much more heavily scrutinized than others, excluded from a lot of activities, and usually accused of being the 'worst' player when I know for a fact she was far from it.
I'm 100% positive it was conflated with me being the guild leader. Back then, leader was a full-time job for me in addition to anything else I had going on. A 40 man raid meant at least 66 active raiders, constant recruitment, and tons of drama.
However, because of that situation, I can barely get my wife to play any online games with me now. She's always very self conscious bout playing - about 'messing up' despite my assurances that she does a great job.
She did play here for a bit, but ultimately quit because of some real life obligations. I asked her to come back and play with me but she said she was strapped on cash and needed to save up. I asked her how much and she replied to the tune of $3.50. Well about that time I realized she was an 8 story tall crustacean from the paleozoic era! I screamed 'Goddam loch ness monster! Get off my lawn!"
boy I was angry
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