Massively multiplayer online games are all about choosing a role for your character to fill in a complete and crowded world, and a new study at the always fascinating Daedalus Project asks MMO players eight questions about the roles they love to role-play.

The most interesting finding had to do with game factions.

“In many games where there are warring factions, disparities between the faction populations typically arise,” said the report. Rebels outnumbered Imperials in Star Wars Galaxies, there are more Alliance than Horde in World of Warcraft, and so far Destruction is destroying Order in Warhammer Online.

Yet the 80% of respondents in the Daedalus Project poll said they would prefer to take up arms for the minority side if given a choice. Who wouldn’t want to play the desperate partisan struggling against overwhelming odds? Or maybe they just want to avoid waiting in line for player vs player battlegrounds.

Another interesting conclusion came from gender choices in character creation. According to the poll, men are four times as likely as women to create a character of the opposite gender, with 26% of men admitting to gender-bending.

When it comes to character classes, things stayed pretty even between the four archetypes of warrior, cleric, mage and archer. “The stereotypical gender difference is also seen,” found the report. “Men prefer to be warriors while women prefer to be healers. There were no gender differences in the archer or mage classes.”

The poll also asked participants about their favorite settings and which roles they preferred in specific settings. It’s worth taking a look at, if just for the comparison between male and female players.