Does your Avatar in a Video Game Effect how Others Treat You?

I’ve been really out of World of Warcraft since sometime in May.  I stopped raiding 11 months ago when things got serious between Brooke and I and we started to spend more and more time together.  Since then, I’ve really not had a whole lot of time to play and my min/max attitude towards the game kept me from really being able to play it casually.  Well, after moving into my condo back in September, I’ve found that I have 2 -3 evenings where I am really damn bored and home alone.  After 3 months of it, I decided I could renew my WoW account and give it a run.

Just as I decided this Patch 3.3 came out, so it was a pretty good time to make a return with a bunch of new content from 5 mans, to 10 mans and even a new battle ground I hadn’t seen.  There were new pets I was able to collect ( Onyxia Whelpling and the Core Hound Pup ).  There was also a new LFG ( Looking For Group ) tool.  I’ve been quite pleased with the few times I’ve been able to use the tool so far, I’ve had some really good groups ( tanks and DPS did what they were supposed to do, and I kept them alive doing what I was supposed to do ), but something happened this evening that made me pause and think.

I had logged in and my guild was quiet so I just hit the LFG tool and was quickly thrown into a group.  It ended up being a mage (female draenei ), death knight (male human), warrior ( tank &  female night elf ), shadow priest ( female night elf ) and myself ( resto shaman & female draenei ).  We were dropped into the 1st wing of the new 5 man and off we went.  There was some banter back and forth, everyone was quite friendly and would make passing jokes here and there and was forgiving when mistakes were make ( nearly had a wipe b/c of an odd pull ).  After the first run, 3 of us wanted to continue on to the second wing, while 2 others had to go.  While we waited for the LFG tool to fill our DPS slots ( the DK and Mage had to leave ) the Warrior and Priest ask me:

So are you a chick outside of game?  We were talking about it and think you are.

I know I play a female character, but I wasn’t all that aware that I come off feminine too.  As the group had cruised through the first dungeon I had made a joke saying that “I know this is fast, especially on a first “date”, but I <3 this group”, and apparently that was enough to tag me as a girl.  I told them that I was a G.I.R.L ( guy in real life ) and that I was a bit surprised that they thought ( and so quickly too ) that I was a woman sitting behind the keyboard. As this was a PuG, there was no voice chat, and being that I had a female character, I’m going to assume that the voice the two individuals gave to my character was also female, and they quickly found themselves envisioning they were speaking with a girl.

Oddly, the tone of the run kind of changed after they found out I wasn’t a girl.  One of them told me they were a girl, the other said nothing ( going to assume it was a guy ), but after finding out I was a guy, they were a bit less chatty, there was less playful banter and it suddenly felt like a normal run.

Was it the fact I was a guy and that threw them off their game after expecting that I was a woman?  Were they less comfortable being all chatty and full of playful banter when they knew there was a guy replying back?  I really don’t know what it was, but there was a distinct difference in how the dungeon run evolved and it took me a back.