The new action MMORPG Lost Ark offers many classes, but no freely selectable genders. Instead, the classes are enclosed in a gender lock. But why is that? And is there still a way to change all of this? Find out here on MeinMMO!
What is a gender lock? The term gender lock refers to a game design philosophy that assigns a fixed gender to each class in a game. This approach is particularly common in Asia, but western games, such as Diablo 2, also had only male barbarians or purely female sorceresses.
Particularly notably, TERA had 5 consecutive purely female classes.
Which classes have which gender? Lost Ark also has a strict gender separation among the classes. In the table, you can see how the classes are currently divided by gender.
| Male Classes | Female Classes |
| Berserker | Bard |
| Paladin | Sorceress |
| Gunlancer | Scrapper |
| Striker | Soulfist |
| Artillerist | Wardancer |
| Deadeye | Gunslinger |
| Sharpshooter | Shadowhunter |
| Deathblade |
Why does the gender lock exist and can it be lifted?
Can the gender lock be bypassed in any way? Unfortunately no. You are bound by the gender lock, and there are simply no female or male models for a class that has the opposite gender from the gender lock.
You can only let loose in the character editor and try to create a character that is as androgynous as possible, which is not clearly assignable to a specific gender. However, you have no influence on animations and other aspects of your character dictated by the gender lock.
How do the developers plan to solve the problem? A lifting of the gender lock is not planned by the developers. However, there is still good news for everyone who would like a female artillerist or a male bard.
According to a blog post, Smilegate plans to simply release new classes in the future that are essentially mirrored versions of an already existing class with a different gender.
There may soon be a female version of the artillerist under another name and with its own animations and equipment parts, or a male bard variant that does cosmetically differ from the female version.
Specifically, this “loosening of the gender lock” has already been implemented. Specifically with the Striker (male version of the Wardancer) and the Gunslinger (female version of Deadeye).
Examples of such an approach have occurred in abundance in other games. For example, TERA provided mirrored versions for some classes in the opposite gender. This has happened particularly often in Black Desert, where sometimes the opposite-gender version had slightly different skills.
Why is there even a gender lock? Gender locks are particularly common in games from Asia. The reasons are manifold. Here are the two most significant:
- Many Asian games do not see hero classes as generic avatars, but as characters.
- It is much cheaper for developers to limit a character to one gender, as this saves a complete animation set and clothing for the other gender.
A detailed listing of the phenomenon gender lock can be found here: Why is there actually a gender lock in MMORPGs?
