Tibia girls: Breaking the stereotype - Can Girls fight?

Every day more and more women are attracted to the fun and freedom that online games offer. Women gamers have an increasing presence in the video game environment, only in Asia the average number of women has grown in recent years at a faster rate than that of men, opening a new world of possibilities in the gaming environment for them and Tibia has not been the exception!

Many years ago when older Tibians began to play Tibia in PVP and war environments, the community of PVP women was small and full of stereotypes and limitations. Over the years there has been an important growth in the community of "warrior women" and we interviewed some of them to find out the motivation that these brave warriors have had to stand firm and thus with their influence, make way for more and more girls to find a place of fun in this style of play. Whether they prefer to hunt, do quests, or just log in to chat with their friends, these girls all have one thing in common: they like to play Tibia fight a war alongside friends and for a cause they firmly believe in.

 Geek Gisa

I play hardcore pvp, the oldest and most basic PVP and the one I understand. I already tried to play open PVP and I have not yet succeeded, it seems incredible to me who understands the open system and one day I would like to learn it too. The RPG of the game is very predictable, many times I find myself hunting in automatic mode, I end up not paying attention to what I'm doing because in my head I already know which hotkeys I have to press so as not to die. In war you don't know what's going to happen, you have to be attentive all the time, know how to listen and concentrate, that's what I like. I amuse myself with that chill you get when you walk into an enemy defense without knowing how it will turn out. My motivation is my enemies, they are wonderful, we die laughing together winning or losing. When it comes to women, the only challenge is equality in genders. While my male friends are called handicapped, women are called horrible things. The ability of both genders is the same in the game, however, the way of trolling women is always directed to her character.

 - Geek Gisa

 

 Lizzieex

I have only participated in two wars. The first one that was after the Tibia merge, I spent more or less 3 or 4 years, which was in the open pvp Talera server. And the second was on Firmera, a slightly more complicated retro pvp server to play, which lasted a little over two months. Currently I am in Lobera which is a dominated server, but I would love to fight war again one day and uff! I would love to learn to run strong respawns without getting trapped myself, that would be great! I love spending time with my friends doing bosses, quests (sometimes we spend hours doing bosses every day). But I also like doing other things like doing quests, getting achievements and when I was on the server in war, getting pk. War gives a warm touch of more fun, kill pks, take pk, annoy enemies... it breaks my routine in an entertaining ways rather than always being leveling up or making bosses. But the most beautiful thing that gave me the greatest motivation to play in war was that we always took care of each other when someone was in trouble for the opposing team. I could say that playing Tibia in this way has helped and impacted my life rl, It has helped me in the routine and stressful environment of work since Tibia is like the way to forget about some problems for a while. I could say that it has had a good and bad impact. Good: the people I have known during the years that I have played tibia, where I consider some of them excellent friends and to be trusted today. The bad impact, because sometimes I can stop doing things in rl that I have to take care of, just for spending more hours in Tibia. And just as there are honest and good people in Tibia, I have also met people who are not very honest and toxic. However, I think we all know that in every war in Tibia there is a bit of toxicity, I received a lot of that but the best thing to do against someone toxic people is not to fall into the same thing, simply ignore it and show that it does not affect you.

 

 - Lizzieex (Lizzy Vampi)

According to The Competitive Intelegence Unit, female gamers increased from 38% to 45% in the United States from 2006 to 2018. We asked Pachalyze one of the leaders of the Insanity (Quelibra) guild about her beginnings in the wars and your motivation to play Tibia this way.

Pachalyze

 

"In 2018 I just abandoned my neutrality and started fighting on an SA server, today I participate in my sixth war, not counting the ones I gave support. At first I really liked the hype of the fight moment, there I was From there everything began to interest me, the mechanics of pvp, the strategies to kill players, the use of space, etc. As for me, I would still like to learn several things about this style of play and my next goals are learning to run DT seal. "

 

-Pachalyze

Michii The Queen

At first, it was difficult being a pvp girl, I understand why we were so few 5 years ago. I entered this world of PVP because of a woman actually, who was bullying me with her boyfriend just because I was a woman, low level and didn't know how to play Tibia very well; this made me want to learn to play better and mainly to be able to defend myself from any type of attack in the game, so I started to learn ... how? haha by dying a lot, learning from my mistakes, sometimes I even recorded myself to see what I could do better the next time.

Tibia environment for a pvp girl was very hostile, very macho ... even among the women themselves the environment among women was heavy; However, what kept me firm was my conviction to fight against all this. I dreamed that one day a girl could enter and enjoy a more friendly environment for her gaming ... and if I had to educate a hostile world like pvp, so that they would respect us as human beings, I would do it at whatever cost. So I did. Today there is undoubtedly a greater inclusion for women within teams at war. The woman has a place, she is respected and most importantly, she is treated like any other player in the team.

-Michii The Queen

Dumon Von'terryer

I really like being with my friends, it doesn't matter doing what, battle, hunt or quests ... being with them I have fun, it is as if I was challenging some fear of doing something, fear of making mistakes trying to fight well. Many people are "charlovers" but I am too, I like my char, however, I want to be more than a player with a nice char, I want to be a good war player. We women are branded as not knowing how to play well, but many women have two types of fears, fear of trying and fear of making a mistake, for example being insulted by a leader ... fear of dying also because they like their little char very much already. I like wars precisely for that reason, because I challenge myself trying to do something, breaking the fame that all women are afraid to play, what I am afraid of is being branded a coward and my motivation is that, to show to the tibian community that there are women who can play without fear of war, who can die and come back as long as the team needs help from main char. I believe that the first challenge is fear, not only of women but all players must understand that it is a game only and for fun. If you die, you will not die in rl, then we must lose the fear of dying in the game and by dying you will learn what you have to do and where you went wrong. So girls, don't be afraid of making a mistake or dying in a 2d game. Another challenge is the insult of other players, men are also insulted, the problem is that we get more uncomfortable with that and if you show that it affects you, the more they will do it, then learn to make yourself stronger with insults.

Essie Blyana

My game has always had pvp since I was level 12, I started neutral and freeaccount with the typical power abuse behind me for being a girl. Then I entered the dominant guild of that time on the Inabra server, I met people who taught me the basics of pvp. When I started the war of Innervision vs Counterplay, I practiced day by day until I acquired the knowledge that I have today about pvp. It was in that war that I decided that pvp is what I want in my day-to-day game and thus I made the decision to fight in Quelibra, where I currently play. My perception of women in the beginning was of a low participation within the pvp or weakness within the wars as a gender, today when I think of a woman pvp I think of strength and courage. I have seen girls being good "tankers" and girls being good running respawns, even girls giving ks or taking ks without giving up. The woman within the pvp increasingly takes more voice and strength and it is time to stop believing that because she is a woman, she does NOT hold ks, does NOT know how to tank, does NOT have a voice within a team and / or is weak, because she is not So. I would love to learn to tank well with the new utamo, also in the future to have the necessary knowledge to command an attack and to be able to perform clearly in war pvp.

-Essie blyana

Lady Mass

I think the first PvP guild I was in was Omega Force. When I joined it, the server was somewhat dominated already, so there was not much to do, but there was also an active war on Shivera, and our guild was allied to them, so we were asked to create makers to help there. I really loved leveling makers, I loved everything about makers, to be honest, I find them super adorable. And while I know that the maker war is really irritating and require 0 skill, I still enjoyed making a run for my life on the 80 levels, and losing skull on these chars always made me feel so good too hahaha I felt like I was playing hide and seek with the enemies, and I loved that while everyone on TS was so stressed about it all, I was just there living my Tibia life to the fullest hahah. Of course, I did PK a little bit before joining the war guild, but it was not quite as intense! 

Playing Tibia as a member of war forced me to learn Spanish! The leaders were always screaming in Spanish and I was lucky if I heard at least the target’s name correctly. So one day I decided “okay, enough is enough!” and took a Spanish course at my University hahaha. My Spanish is still not as good as I’d want it to be, but if it wasn’t for the Tibia wars, it would be still at a complete 0. There is a lot of talk about toxicity in the middle of pvp however, as strange as it may seem, I have experienced very little negativity coming from the enemies, on the contrary, they usually turned out to be quite nice; I think I experienced more negativity and gossip coming from members of my own guild!

Just like in real life, in Tibia the woman is also the biggest enemy of another woman. Thankfully, due to the growth of the Tibian Instagram community, we get to meet each other and actually support one another! Of course, there are still some exceptions, but I am positive that the number of these exceptions will decrease even more with time! I think, however, that for both, females and males, real-life appearance or wealth will always be the factors brought up by the enemies, as in most cases, it is easier to call someone ugly than killing that person in the game. You don’t win wars this way though. Weirdly enough, I have experienced very little negativity coming from the enemies, in the contrary, they were usually very nice to me. I think I experienced more negativity and gossips coming from the members of my own guilds!

But when it comes to negativity in general then well… I know it’s easier said than done, but I have done it too, therefore I can say it. People who badmouth you do not want good for you. They don’t care about your improvement. They don’t say bad things about you to make you work on yourself, they do it to bring you down. Focus on what the people close to you tell you. If a person who actually cares about you says something, then you can ponder on how to change it. In any other cases, it is really pointless. The words of others will never change who you really are. Also, don’t try to reason with them, they don’t care about being reasonable, they care about making your day bad, don’t give them this satisfaction:3 If you feel like you really wanna say something, let it all out to your close friend. Works!

-Lady Mass                                                             

By: Michi