My experience broadly backs up what you’re saying. Boys prefer the HnS, gaining levels and PK side of MU*s. They don’t mind doing quests or grinding if it gets them better eq or more pracs to go PK with. Girls tend to be there much more for the social and creative aspect, which in our place manifests itself as roleplaying. They quite like crafting and questing, but their main love seems to be roleplaying.

I suspect the amount of female gamers you’ll find on any particular game will depend on its focus – the more PK heavy ones less so. Also, the general theme probably matters a bit – for example in the wheel of time which we’re set in, women are immensely powerful – in essence they control magic.

This certainly skews the statistics because many blokes who want to play the big old magic user then play females. In our MUD the playerbase character distribution is 77% male 21% female. I wouldn’t actually like to estimate what percentage of our players are female. I’d guess around 20%.

Nass