I was hanging out with a lolock friend last night working on a big web project that will make us both thousandaires, and we got to discussing studies on mental processes, and the difference between how men’s and women’s brains work. This was partially started by some comments in yesterday’s post.
My friend was telling me about a study he read that concluded one of the primary differences in how women think vs. how men think is that men are generally better at focusing in very tightly on one thing, and women are generally better at managing multiple tasks at once. They found the results were the same across ages and cultures.
Naturally, this led us to WoW.
Now, I’m going to risk getting kicked in the shins here and point out that, by my observations, a crazy high percentage of women play healers.
Don’t get me wrong, if there’s anything we’ve learned from the WHU, it’s that there are tons of badass topping-the-meters hunter chicks with guns out there. But the healer end seems to have wildly dispropotionate representation. I mean, the significant marjority of all WoW players are men. Yet the majority of healers I’ve known in 4+ years of WoW are women.
I’ve always theorized that perhaps women just have less need to compare cock size on the damage meters, or perhaps are more willing to fill a vitally needed but undesirable role, or even that it’s the care-giving instinct that makes healing satisfying (a lot of mothers that are healers too, I’ve noticed).
But now my friend – who played a healer for a while and has horrible tunnel-vision – suggested that perhaps women are just naturally mentally better at healing, because the role requires paying attention to so many different things at once. This is undeniably true.
Whatever you, as a dpser, have to pay attention to, the healer does as well: instead of focusing on the boss, the healer is focusing on the tank – though they often also have to pay attention to boss casts; they have to pay attention to all the blue circles and green circles and red circles and lava waves and every other environmental thing; they have their own casting rotation to manage. But they also need to pay attention to the health of the entire raid, as well as debuffs that they have to cure. They have to be able to switch targets within a half second, toss out a renew or shield or clense, and instantly switch back before the tank goes down.
So does nature favor women for healers? And is it because of an evolutionary instinct to “mother,” a lack of need to flex nuts, or a mental advantage that just makes them superior? Or am I totally on crack and all the healers I know are just freaks not representative of WoW at large?
Oh, and the conversation with the lolock that started all of this – that conversation ended with the brilliant conclusion:
“And that’s why you’re way more of a girl than me Frost. You can pay attention to all that stuff at once, but I’m focused like a laser!”
[NOTE: I related this story to a co-worker. She agreed with the conclusions. She especially agreed that I'm way more of a girl.]
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Dues Payer
You can’t possibly be a girl, because you are a robot.
…says HAL.
However, I tend to agree agree with it. You clearly have no emotions. However, one must wonder whether frustration is an emotion or simply a state of being?
We had this debate in Sweden for many years. Women are supposed to be better at multi-tasking than men due to the fact that it has traditionally been their role to nurse and protect the children.
However, sticking my chin out, this ability is not always good as it sometimes leads to system overload as they are taking in more information than they can handle, resulting in core meltdown and inability to perform. Women are very concerned with how others think about them and do not risk taking the wrong decision.
Not that men can handle more information than women, but they solve that by being oblivious and if they do end up taking the wrong decision, they will just shrug and “What ever”!
b.t.w. I love reading your site, I hit 80 on my Orc hunter 6 weeks ago and the very next day I left for the US and haven’t been able to play since that. I spent a ton of time studying specs, gear and glyphs on the web and your site has learned me a lot.
However, reading about all this stuff without being able to play, it’s like reading porn without ever getting laid…
This is very timely, as there were a couple of knuckleheads on my server last night saying the female player numbers are a myth. My toon is a female, mainly because my daughters thought she was, uh, “pretty,” but I know of many women who play. Some of them I am shocked to have learned that do. Many husbands are running with wives or couples online together. Except my wife. She said to not even think of it, lol. I couldn’t heal though, it involves WAY too much multitasking, and I barely keep my cat alive sometimes, lol.
Actually, our guild must be a bit of a rarity then! Out of our healing team we have 2 priests (male) 1 pally (male) 1 shammy (male) and 1 resto druid (female). We did have another priest for a while and he was also male.
Go figure lol
Dues Payer
While I absolutely concur with the mindset that women can multi-task much better than men, I’m not so sure that it coincides with the job of healer. Heck, with heal-bot, thats about as single-minded and single-tasked as any role in the game gets! My husband *only* likes to play his holy pally in raids – he laughs that all he needs to know is “Who to Heal” and he’s 75% ready to go.
Its too subjective to base class choice on gender, imo…ALL of the best healers I’ve known in end-game are dudes (it might be that those numbers are skewered, sure), and there are equally as many DPS girls as guys that I run with. (And dont think that the healers are ePeen-free…why else do they flash their Healing stats on recount, hmmmm?)
i ono about it being healers but i have noticed it with all clothies and such but i do know a few girl tanks 2, guess u would need blizz 2 do a census 2 get a real picture
Admin
Interesting – I’ve never known a healer to flash their healing stats, or anything else for that matter
Didn’t know they actually cared about that stuff. Healers I know don’t even run recount.
Member
In our ten man, we are split 7:3 for men. The women are a Resto shammy, Boomkin and dps DK – They are all rock solid players and all avoid speaking on vent oddly enough. One of them is a spouse to our 10 man Druid Healer.
Typically, I adopt a term for MMO compostion from the movie American Pie II – “Sausage Party”. If it looks like a girl, I expect it to be a guy. I’m pleasantly surprised by the discovery of women players but have no illusions as to whom dominates the world of PC games. Oh, the absolute WORST Hunter I’ve ever met was a woman btw. She didn’t like to get her pet hurt and thought Kiting was the thing you do when you drop traps down on the road and wing clip while your pet chases the mob ><.
Member
To quote Elitist Jerks, the plural of anecdote is not data. Drawing conclusions on whether men or women prefer to be healers or make better healers based on our individual experiences is unscientific
To start, there are millions of casual WOW players out there who readers of WHU are likely to never run into. The relative ratio of men to women in that large group could be very different from the end-game focused group that most of end tend to see.
Second, the ratio of women to men in end-game raiding can be hard to determine anyway, because not all women play female characters, while many men do. And not all women online will identify themselves as women so as to avoid having to deal with juvenile reactions from male players (to be fair, some women will explicitly reveal themselves to be women in order to exploit male players, so it’s really just that things are inconclusive).
And lastly, within my guild experience (which, not so surprisingly probably mirrors Frost’s pretty strongly), the issue is almost certainly one of small sample size. Bottom line, the guilds that I have been in have had fairly limited numbers of women. But there are many, many men who happily have been healers – and effective healers at that. And the women have been split fairly evenly between DPS and Healing. Just 1 female tank (well, two if you count Dreph, but he just tanked like a gurl), but a good number of DPS. Not to mention women who freely move between roles with different characters.
Anyway, saying women make better healers is pretty much the same as saying that men make better DPSers – and is that really what you are trying to say?
My healer in my guild is a guy. He really good at it. He does ask me to run recount for him after raid heals. Is HPS a stat? Do Heals crit?
Admin
No, I’m not trying to say men make better dpsers — as I noted, the WHU emails I get prove that one wrong! Just that from my observations of a handful of hundred players, and discussions with others, women seem to be disproportionately represented in healing classes. My question is why (if it’s true).
Best quote I’ve heard in a long while though Ord: The plural of anecdote is not data. Hells yeah.
The Haterade
G.R.O.S.S.!!!!!
But on a serious note, (good) tanking requires just as much attention and I have seen more men tanks than women. I think this goes more towards the protector (tank) and nurturer (healer) stereotypes though.
Admin
Hmm, I guess that means we at the WHU fill the (hunter) role!
Member
Personaly if your talking Men Vs Women in roles of WoW I see the DPS as an easy enough way to statisfy our urges to kill and win.
But speaking as a healer as well I have noticed per captia there seems to be more female healers then male and I honestly have no idea on why I could spout off some of the sterotype stuff but that doesn’t help any.
To me this issue is kinda like the Voice of the People “You got 500 million people all screaming for diffrent things the only thing you can agree on is you don’t want higher taxes” so I think its up to the indivual to decide what they think as far as the women/men healing roles
Dues Payer
i approve of this post
(go figure as a I am a girl and a healer)
i dont know if the ability to multi-task is gender related, but i have heard that women use both the left and right brain more often than men…
i do have recount loaded, and it is saved on healing done.. i like to see where i fall in the raid.. sigh.. always around 3rd:D but being a hybrid.. i cant possibly out do our Trees and Priests:D
and i agree that each of our roles are just as difficult as each others:D I learned my lesson well that the grass is just as hard to mow on the other side of the fence:D
My boyfriend is a Resto Druid..and I am a kick ass DPSer with a big gun!
I totally wear the pants
multi-tasking in previous generations was seen as stronger in women then men, but many of these notions do not apply to the younger generation, in fact they have been labelled the “multi-tasking” generation, for their higher apptitude for it. There have been many recent studies on multi-tasking phenomenon in youth, and a time article on “the multi tasking generation”. I was also reading the abstract of a US study of the relative multi tasking skill of 3 american generations covering gender differences between.
My guild is pretty 50 /50 for male and female players even got a few husband and wife teams too but our healers are both sexed. I think its coming down to more the style of game play you like and we all know you cant raid without healers. Interesting about the mother hood point and multi tasking but i am finding both sexs can play any part if there devoted and put there mind to it.
Laughing my ass off as I read this because I’ve had this same conversation many times.. and I agree with you in every aspect of it heh, women not only are better healers but a majority of them playing wow ARE healers as well.
Case closed.
Our guild is made up of a somewhat balanced group of men and women. We are healer heavy in our guild, with roughly 6 or 8 of them on at any given time, but there are at least as many men who play healers here as women. The DPS and tanks on the other hand are mostly men. I’m one of maybe 3 DPS’ing women in the guild and thanks to your help, my meters show me gaining on them, rapidly. (insert maniacal laughter here) Much to the dismay of those boys who swear a girl just can’t DO good dps. Thank you SO very much!
I have only experience the opposuit, all females I have meet in WoW have been DPS, sure I know one or two female healers but I havent played with them.
And the most intresting thing is, all of the female DPSrs I have played me are bad or seriously bad. May be one or 2 exceptions but most of them them were not doing the DPS they should or they screw up constantly.
As far as the multi-tasking thing goes, the roles sure play out that way with my wife and I.
If she sends me downstairs to make her cup of hot tea, I’m going to one-shot it.
If she sends me downstairs to make her a cup of tea, feed the cat, take out the garbage and lock the front door, it’s probably going to be a wipe.
She on the other hand could handle all of those things and then some.
I (male) play a dual spec Shadow / Disc priest (male undead) as my main toon. I had a female hunter main pre-wrath, but on my server DPS is a penny/dozen…so I roled a Priest to have an “alternate healer” for my guild.
I actually LOVE healing, It is a very focused job and can be rewarding (if only to myself). I even know a few female (IRL) healers. It’s kinda funny-on my server anyway, when you see a female healer, she’s usually a female IRL, a male healer, usually a male IRL. Seems to be different than DPS classes. Just an observation as I myself have a couple female DPS toons, lol.
Nice to see someone who actually recognizes it. I hate it sometimes though, as an “undergeared” tank / group blames me when I can’t heal them through big boss hits- (Hey retard! NOBODY can heal you through a hateful strike if you’re wearing GREENS!) Everyone always pats the tank on the back for a good job, while the healer goes quietly into the night, as YET AGAIN his gear doesn’t drop.
It has it’s perks too though. I DO get into raids all the time and when cloth gear DOES drop, it has less competition when rolling for it. Though I DID just lose my 7.5 head piece to our tank (pally). I rolled a 99!!! she rolled 100!! >(
I’ve never really cared about the recount personnaly, though it IS funny when I beat some of the DPS when I’m in Healing spec, lol.
Show the love to your healers guys…wether they’re male or female…without them, there wouldn’t be ANY raids. =P
Your healers dont run recount?! Your healers don’t flash their new gear?! Your healers are not competetive?!?
You sure we play the same game?
Member
I often play the bg’s with another hunter who happens to be female. We both have VERY similar gear, gems, enchants, and pets, with me slightly ahead (1pt boys). We both go into the battleground, and at the end of the game the results are as follows. Killing blows (1pt boys). Damage done (1pt girls). Honourable kills (1 pt girls). Healing done (1pt girls). Less Deaths (1pt girls).
boys =2 pts girls =4pts
When we talk about it afterwards the only thing we can come up with is that boys focus on killing 1 at a time where girls can see the bigger picture and pewpew everything that can be a threat to her. (With the exception of undead rogues where she goes for the throat, and wishes she could kick em when they r dead.)
So with that in mind I see your science Frost. Girls are, in average, better at multi-tasking!!
I play both a survival hunter and a discipline priest in raids. Both immensly just especially now that survival got more complicated. However i keep recount turned on while playing my priest simply so i can give the real reason why someone died when they yell about not getting heals.
Member
My guild has a fair share of girls, which pretty much all are healers, except one and that’s myself . I am proud to say i am a hunter although my toon is male (not sure as to why i did that) There is also some guys in the guild that are healers as well. As the multitasking goes, i can multitask up a storm in RL, but i think when it comes to the game i dont really want to do that, i want something different, hence me being a hunter. I have thought seriously about bringing up a warrior as my BF is the main warrior tank for the guild. But i would rather just play my hunter and try to be the best that i can Plus for me my hunter is my first 80 and i worked hard at getting him there and am still working hard at upgrading and still learning to be the best that i can. I am lucky with my guild there is only a handful of hunters so its kinda nice not having to compete a lot against your own.
Member
well im a hunter/resto shammy and i do recount for both because it shows whos doing the most work or who just along for the ride and im male but i have alot of cocky ppl in my guild who want my dps top of the chart and my healing to be top cause thet talk alot of smack but i go ballz to the wall on both