No Girls Allowed!

Just like in the days of forts and tree houses, it seems a lot of World of Warcraft guilds have adopted a “No Girls Allowed” policy.  The reasons might not be the same as they were back when little boys thought girls were yucky, and didn’t want to play with their Barbie dolls, though.

Over the years I have followed the best of the best guilds in World of Warcraft quite closely, it is almost like following the rankings of the teams in your favorite sports, who will kill what first, who is the best at the time, what the best players are up to, who is using what strategies, etc.  One thing I have noticed which seems to be becoming a popular trend is a “No Girls Allowed” policy enacted in many of the best guilds in the world.  But why?

While this might appear sexist, I do not believe that to be the case.  I believe it is merely the leadership of said guilds recognizing the weaknesses of their players, and avoiding any unnecessary conflict.  This weakness being, girls.  The average male MMO players are single males in the age range of probably 18-30.  Generally lonely, and horny.  When you introduce a female into this environment, they become an immediate distraction.

Many people probably assume, wrongly, that these guilds are full of sexist assholes who think girls simply aren’t as good of players as men are.  This is not the case though.  Many girl gamers are just as good if not better then men are, and if you had to take a survey, I would be willing to guess that a better ratio of the girl players are actually good players then the men are.  This is of course probably due to the fact that there are so few female gamers vs male gamers, that there is much more room for suck with so many men playing.

To quote the VANQUISH recruitment policy (VANQUISH is a top 10 world guild):

Due to our history and experience we’ve had with female gamers, we currently do not recruit players that lack a penis. This can be taken another way but in this case, we mean literally lack thereof. Some of you may think this is sexist, but you have to understand, when you put a female in an organization with a bunch of sex deprived World of Warcraft nerds, their hormones get the best of them. Women in World of Warcraft guilds cause more drama than ‘TNT’ and this is a no-drama organization.

So, is this the fault of the women?  No, I don’t think so, but I also do believe the above is an entirely true statement, and that it should be a guilds prerogative to not allow girls in it.  So, exactly what impact does having no girls in a guild have?  Well, several of the top 100 guilds in the world do not allow girls, explicitly, others prefer not to have girls, but will make exceptions, but most, do not discriminate.  So obviously, allowing women does not stop some of the best guilds in the world, from being the best.

What it boils down to, in my opinion, is simply wanting to avoid the all too common drama associated with guilds in wow, and the desire to remove any possible cause of said drama.  So, do girls cause drama?  Yes.  Absolutely.  By no fault of their own, though.

So what sort of drama and favoritism are we talking about?  Quite trivial things really, but usually enough to cause a stir.  These things range from: girls being flirty, or accused of flirting with other guild members to get what they want, girls being given “gifts” from other members, leadership being overall nicer and more forgiving toward girls, girls being given special treatment with regard to loot, or other things like this.  When exposed, it usually pisses people off.

Case Study

As an example, my girlfriend is a wow player, in fact, I met her in wow.  (Relationships starting in games will be an entirely separate post).  When we met, I was an officer and raid leader in the guild she was in.  I should mention though, and she will back this up 100%, that I for one, never gave her any special treatment, ever.  This did not stop the drama though.

Going backwards a bit from the above, we were in the guild together for over two years before we even spoke, I was just the mean old raid leader, and she was just another member who I treated just like everyone else.  She will tell you stories though, about some of the other leadership.  Before my guild adopted an open bid/fixed price DKP scheme, it was a closed bidding, highest bid wins, system.  This means, you send a message to a leader about how much you want to pay for an item, and if you bid the highest, you win.

She can tell you first hand, that many times, she and the other girls would bid on items just to have the officer taking the bids reply simply saying “bid more”.  Essentially awarding the loot to the girls to be nice.  The girls did nothing to expect this behavior out of the officers, did not ask for this treatment, yet, accepted it.

This is just the tip of the iceberg really, in the past year sitting next to her playing together, I cannot even being to count the amount of items, gold, or other sorts of help my girlfriend gets inside of an mmo, just because she is a girl.  She is not outwardly slutty, or flirty, just her cute female self, and men just feel compelled to help out or be nice.

So where does the drama start with regard to my experience?  It is quite simple really.  Once it was openly known that myself, and my girlfriend were seeing each other, members began to assume that something fishy was going on.  Simple things like treating her special, awarding her DKP which was not earned, giving attendance credit where it was not due, etc, etc.  While this was not the case at all, we began to have every aspect of everything we did in the game inspected under a magnifying glass and treated as if we were under suspicion.  This annoying drama, is what eventually lead to her and I both quitting the guild, and wow.

So as you can see, it is the fault of women that my old guild lost two of its best players, right?  All sarcasm aside, obviously it was not her fault, however, in a guild absent of women, this will NEVER happen.  Can you blame certain guilds for wanting to avoid this?

Some things are just never acceptable.  A club full of only white men, with only white men allowed, people automatically compare to the KKK, and assume it is a racist group.  A club full of only women, is perfectly okay, and no one will complain.  I feel it is the right of the guilds leader to allow women or not, and no one should complain about it or find it sexist.  Some feminist groups have even gone to extremes, such as hacking the guild websites of guilds which do not allow girls, even though there are probably more guilds in mmo’s which are girl only guilds, who never get bothered by anyone.

Further Reading

An editorial arguing for the girls

A blog post against women in guilds