We got a Letter!?!??!!!!

Yay! -- I got a letter -- and even though Justin posted his comment as well as sent me an email, it still counts. (And I know others of you have sent me email and I appreciate it, but this one actually asked me a question that I can try to answer.)

So, this email was about my favorite Post to date: What Kind of Buff would you get from Sex?

So Justin writes:

:) Hilarious... and might be implemented lol.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on how gay / lesbian sex would work considering they know how to please the same sex easier as they have experience with their own body.

Regards!

So BRK gets letter asking him about mechanics of the game, what shots to use, what trap where, I get asked about sex... I win.

Course, now I have to opine on the Same-Sex Sex Buff (SSSB), which as a heterosexual male, I'm not sure I'm fully qualified to do so, but I am going to try and if any GLBTI MMO friends/readers would like to tell me I am crazy or have a correction, please feel free -- you know I like comments!

Here goes:
First off I am going to take Ratmaggot's suggestion in the comments and say that males need attunement to have sex (females may need a much easier attunement). However, should the attunement be easier if you want to have same-sex sex or more difficult? I'm gonna say from my experience that a man trying to understand women is a little harder than understanding someone of the same sex, so I'm going with an easier attunement to be able to have homosexual sex and, as Justin notes, since they are more comfortable with similar parts, a very high Proc rate for the buff, say around 90% -- as to what that buff would be, we have to look at more factors.

Well first off, we have to make it so that there would be a chance that any partner in any same sex liason could get either the Male Sex Buff (MSB) or the Female Sex Buff (FSB) but there should also be a very small proc rate for the SSSB. And would the buff from gay sex be different from the lesbian sex buff, I suppose there is no one that can testify to that, so for simplicity sake, the SSSB needs to be for any non-hetero sex.

Other issues include a cool down timer -- There would also have to be a cool down time before you could have sex again, whether the buff procs or not. I'm thinking 12 hours for men and 4 hours for women.

We also have to decide if you can be bi-sexual in the game or do you have to stick with the lifestyle you have chosen for your character? If you go with the same sex attunement, can you do the hetero attunement and then go both ways or should you be limited to your first choice? Personally, if I were playing I would want my character to be bisexual and get whatever buff I could get (and good lord, can you imagine the orgies before raids)! However as a programmer, I'm making you pick one or the other -- you're either straight or gay, once you've been attuned to your sexual orientation you'll need to pay lots of gold to re-attune to a different sexual assignment. No one is on the down low here!

Now here is the rub in all of this... the Daedalus Project (PDF) has done a great demographic study of who is playing Warcraft. In their study men outnumber women by 5.25 to 1 and those men are 7 to 8 times more likely to play a character of the opposite sex:

"In other words:
about 1 out of every 2 female characters is played by a man
about 1 out of every 100 male characters is played by a woman"

And I would guess that 80% the straight males who play a female character in Age of Conan are gonna want to play a lesbian character... which means that there will be about 1 woman for every 5 men and that is even if as many women play Age of Conan as those that play WoW (which I doubt). So unless a lot of straight men are willing to have their characters be of a different sexual orientation than themselves they are going to have to go without those great buffs or else start "self procing".

Okay, so with all that in mind, what would the SSSB be and how would it work within the mechanics of the game?

Here's what I would do: If the sex buff procs from gay sex here is what may happen: you have a 63% chance to get the MSB a 33% chance to get the FSB and a 4% chance to get the SSSB and just reverse it for lesbian sex.
Now because of the small proc rate and to encourage competitive straight men to play gay characters I think the SSSB should be pretty special, say something like this:

"Teh Gay" Buff: A 4 hour buff that improves all stats by 20% and haste rating by 10%. Additionally, when this buff is active the character may have sex with 4 more players (1 an hour) of any sex with a sex buff guaranteed.

Whadaya think?





Wow Item Creator!