skeletonbow: It would be an interesting psychological experiment to repeat what you've done however I bet the results would be the same. I never thought about it before but I bet that actual female gamers must have to deal with a lot of crap online while gaming depending on what the games/forums/etc. are etc. just from the overall nature of the wolfpack out there. As for the clan joining though, that would fail when a clan game was on with voice chat without some special software or a staple gun. :)
Incidentally, I would bet money that the majority of people playing Tomb Raider are male. Two words:
boobs!
boobs!
huN73R: FPS multiplayer games tend to attract more assholes than MMO's, who are shitty to pretty much everyone, male or female. There's no moderation done in many FPS multiplayer games. They have the power to vote kick someone off server and it is misused a lot. Lots of L4D2 stories about this.
I figured as much. It was like that 15 years ago when I did a lot of multiplayer Halflife etc. and we all ended up setting up our own semi-private server that had a modicum of etiquette to it. My entire group of friends pretty much were all like minded in that we all were respectful to each other and to others, we were there to have fun in a positive manner, nobody cheated nor installed cheats/hacks or crap to give an advantage in play, and any other sane thing you'd expect from respectable gamers. When our clan played online, it was rare that we could find any other random collection of people or another clan that did the same, so we often just split in half and played against each other instead to avoid the nonsense of wide open online multiplayer.
Once in a while I go online and fire up an FPS to do multiplayer but almost invariably there is someone with an aim-bot or other cheat crap even though it is a VAC enabled server, so it becomes non-fun quick and I bail and go look for another server, then eventually get bored of that game of whack-a-mole and go back to single player somethingorother.
From day one, I've always been a gamer with netiquette, I don't cheat in any way even in single player games and I even go as far as letting other players know I am using a 20 button mouse that is programmable to see if they are ok with that, and if anyone objects I will reprogram my mouse or disable the configuration to make it work like a 3 button mouse just so that it is a completely level playing field. If only everyone had that level of respect for their fellow gamers out there, multiplayer would be so much more enjoyable! Hell, I'd even lower my screen resolution down if someone wanted me to in order to balance fairness.
Nowadays, I still enjoy single and multiplayer in spirit but 99% of my gaming is single-player, partly because "the gang" are all married with children or workaholics or alcoholics, and random multiplayer tends to suck as per above. ;)