I guess this isn't as interesting as the title suggests. I'm wondering, how many people select a character on Star Trek Online that is the same gender as you are in real life, and how many select one that's different?
Seems to me that your poll overlooks the fact that every account has two character slots by default and people can buy more. You mean first character? Main? My first characters in an MMO tend to be male. After that I might mix things up a bit.
I have multiple main characters, some male, some female. It all depends on the archtype or persona I have in mind when I create the character. Sean - Young gungho captain who tends to get into trouble. Sort of a young Riker/mature Harry Kim hybrid. Miranda - Imagined as one of the best doctors in Starfleet. So she's sort of based on Crusher and Pulaski. T'Prenn - Based on the idea of Spock as a Science oriented captain, but I couldn't think of a good Vulcan male name so he became her. The only male name I could think of was Sypher, but I didn't like it. Jason - A young Borg-liberated human with a deep hatred of the Borg. So I imagined him as a young, angsty/angry version of Locutus complete with bald head.
Four of my five characters are male. However I do sometimes play a sexy ginger trill who commands a ship crewed by mostly sexy ginger trills. I spend more time than I'd like to admit just standing on the bridge and watching them work.
Every time I try to make a female char in any rp setting I have a dozen guys hitting on said char and it just kinda creeps me out.
I have about 22 characters. It's half and half, really. As far as "main" characters go, my Klingon General is female (and actually Klingon,) and my Fed Admiral (human and my first STO character) is also a chick. I'm half and half on Champions Online also, but my Romulan parody/homage who is my main (and my current avatar on this board) is a guy.
I voted male with an alien female character. If I am going to spend a lot of time staring at a character, I prefer it to look good. And typically, I feel female characters look better than male.
Female with a Cardassian male character. I modeled him after one of my fanfic characters in appearance. I also have a Caitian female character and a Nausicaan KDF character (male goes without saying), but I don't play them much. Probably because I identify with the Cardassian better.
I'm a male to female transgender, and my character is a misanthropic hermaphrodite fire troll. Are we all talking about the same game here?
Cool. I'm a male (though I work on a balance between my masculine and femine sides, mentally), and my character, Cassy (whom some of you saw in my art thread), and she, while looking, sounding, like a female is, in fact, a male of her species, but she was found and raised by humans when she was an infant. She has no knowledge of where she came from. It's all in my character's bio, and I'll be playing as soon as my computer get a better video card, or when my new computer finally arrives....which ever comes first.
I'm male and it depends on the intended use of the character. My main (KDF and Fed) - Male Roleplaying - Male General gameplay - Female. If I'm going to spend hours looking at something, I'd prefer that something was a pixilated representation of a woman then a pixilated representation of a man. All my female toons are aliens made to look human (it's to do with the greater choice of traits, the same goes for my male toons), so when I'm on a social map for any lentgth of time I'll switch costumes so she becomes an ugly looking genderless monster.