Where are all the Tarts – opps uh scantily dressed women in Mogged gear?
Can I say that? I think I have just put feminism in MMO’s back a few years.
I shall qualify this first by reminding you I am female, and yes I wore these pants and I liked them. **
For those under a Rock the newest patch 4.3 bought about the ability to transmogrify via Transmogrification, pieces of armor to look like other pieces of amour in-game that you have in your possession. AKA Mogging!
The first set of gear I mogged into on my Priest Main was the easiest one I could find, and involved a nice little red crimson cloth set. Feeling ‘sexy’ with plenty of cleavage. I wore it around a little because I could, and felt rather silly.
I got my tier shoulders and changed into something more respectable.
I came across one of the few players I have seen who have gone out of their way to expose every bit of flesh possible in the AH. It was more of a crotch-ful – eyeful. Be careful where you pan your camera when they are standing next to the Auctioneer.
There doesn’t seem to be many people who have mogged their gear into the most extreme cases of ‘lets show all the flesh I can on my Toon . ‘ The Santa baby Human commoners in their little red santa suit are dressed more scandalously then even a small fraction of players toons are.
” Where are all the Tarts?” is sensationalistic, and it’s a backwards mentality that women are judged by what we wear – more so then a man ever will. It is a very clear judgement of the choices you make in the clothes you wear as to how you are perceived. I’m not restarting the armor design and every mans fantasy argument either, but I will observe that given the choice ( within your armor class) all players have the ability to Mogg their gear into what ever they please, and the vast majority do not seem to have gone down the path of the scantily clad.
Have we been shamed into not dressing like that? Can we just not be bothered? Have we chosen to dress more respectable, or is the value we place on matching tiers from the past, and style more important then dressing like a Tart? ( sic)
I changed out of my Red Crimson set because it ‘felt’ inappropriate – it’s not how I wanted my character to be perceived, but lastly it didn’t match my new tier shoulders and I wanted to show them off more than I wanted my NE boobs cleavage flashed.
Wear/Mogg what you want. Sometimes we have a choice, Sometimes we don’t. I remember playing my first pally that I attempted and put a quest reward on in Westfall on to find it wasn’t much more than a bikini bottom with some side flaps and another toon chasing me around telling me to put some clothes on.
But for the same reason I will probably make my toon wear the santa suit at least once, why occasionally I dress up in a ‘lovely dress’ I like my toon looking cute, feminine, sexy, lovely, adorable, pretty and that’s ok, but I guess I can only liken it to playing dress ups I only want to do it occasionally.
( PS – I love seeing the careful effort people have put into the collection their favorite tier pieces to mogg into)
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On a serious note for when it comes to female armor read Fantasy Armor and Lady Bits The problem with Womens armor in games by a man who makes armor ( via Kotaku )
Metal boob shaped plates basically shout ” My heart is in between these – stab me here”
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Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog 
For me it’s character specific, my shaman who I imagine to be a bit of slut is dressed a little tartishly. However she’s still wearing more than I used to go out on a Saturday night in… so. For my cloth wearers though, there are so many beautifully designed robes, I’ve been too spoilt for choice.
I did get a whisper from some irate person accusing me of being a ten year old boy though whilst playing AV on said Shaman this weekend. Which I have to admit made me smile, since I’m female and somewhat older than ten but I do wonder if people have been shamed away from undressing too much.
From what I’ve seen of other people’s transmog sets so far, they seem to be mostly old tier sets, although I’ve seen a couple of Female Dwarf warlocks rocking the mageweave set. Being a Gnome and standing behind them in Iceblood tower ….. big mistake.
I think the point is that you should have choices on how you want to dress, in the same way you have them for male characters. It would also be nice if the female models of the same gear didn’t look like a starved sibling of their male version. 😉
In an ideal world, I agree that dress choices would matter zero in defining how you are perceived or stereotyped socially – but that day will never come in a world that is obsessed with and often reduced to visuals. it’s hard for the next person to differ between the ‘woman that wears bikini plate because she is a victim of gender stereotypes’ and the ‘woman who wears bikini plate to spite the stereotype’. it shouldn’t matter right, but when is that ever the case? yet, for me personally the answer is easy: in videogames I wanna dress in armor that ‘makes sense’ for combat and setting. however, that is worlds apart from being ugly armor.
A very interesting link to that armorer btw, thanks.I agree with him fully that you can make armor that is both functional AND appealing / feminine. he also picked up my big TERA qualm. =D
The first time I found an exploitative breastplate on a female in WoW (sure it was only mid-riff but even still) I thought it was pretty stupid.
If and when I tmog gear, its to create an effect. Personally won’t be tmogging female characters to look like tarts. If I wanted to look at scantily clad female flesh, I’d visit a shopping mall on late night shopping.
I have been reluctant to mog gear that’s going to be replaced soon. It just feels too expensive. So I’m waiting to get my T13 and honor/valor sets before I really go for it. The other thing I’ve discovered is that I don’t have a lot of great-looking stuff in my bank so I need to go find it or make it or buy it. I love the idea of dressing up (or down!) but it has been hard to get around to doing it.
I enjoy herb gathering so I spend a lot of time running through swamps chased by raptors (or something like that) and the visuals are lost on predators.
As far as look I do enjoy the cloth armor robes, especially Cenarian circle items.
Based on the amount if money I’m getting from the AH for black mageweave clothing I’m thinking that there are plenty of people that want to be tartish. My spriest is scantily clad and is so tartish that it even refuses to step foot on the ground. I’ll not be shamed into changing my style by those that walk on the ground.
In the end it’s all character specific on how I dress my toons based on internal role-playing for each toon. Some can’t be bothered to do more dps for fear of injuring themselves and then there’s the rogue that looks like death incarnate ripping bodies to shreds…
I’m struggling with too much choice… I have no clear idea what I want my characters to look like yet! Except the DK… she has the original DK armor that she got when she started leveling.
Disclaimer – I am NOT 10, please add a 33 to that. I am not male. I approve of the following image.
On any other character this might look a tad too “tartish”. But, c’mon, you gotta agree that it looks pretty damn hot on a hunter with a matching pet.
Out of all my toons, the one in the image above is the most scantily clad. With my other toons I went a different route based on my upset on the transmogging rule of the “same gear type” thing. Blizz stated something to the effect of “it’s because we don’t want DKs wearing dresses” and/or “we don’t want toons looking silly”. Because of those statements, I decided to design outfits that will make my toons look like a class other than what they actually are…or as silly as I could get them to look.
For example:
– My lock is wearing the Silver-Thread set and she looks like a rogue when her minion is put away (minus the staff she carries…sigh…she needs a MH and OH weapon so badly). My lock also has a second set that makes her look like a priest.
– My tanking pally has gear that has a sleek, rogue-ish look to it (in blacks and reds) minus the “sword & board”. It’s not big and bulky like most plate gear is. He has no healing spec set/outfit yet. :o(
– My resto druid set also is rogue-ish looking (in blacks and grays) and his feral tanking set makes him look like a pimp in purples & yellows (I know, not a class…but funny none the less…lol)
– Another one of my hunters has a pretty, soft purple-ish colored dress looking set that makes her look like a shaman when her pet is put away (but I did go and tame purple-ish colored pets to match her outfit)
– And, as soon as I can get the dam leg piece to drop in Heroic Underbog, my deathknight WILL be wearing a dress…and he will look like a mage in all purples! (the T2 Judgement recolor set)
Didn’t think I had any images of my other toon’s sets….but I did. Thought I would link them for you to see.
Warlock = priest (she needs shoes…lol)
Warlock = rogue (she actually carries a staff though in pic she isn’t)
Hunter = shaman (it’s actually the same hunter in main comment image and not another of my hunters like I thought)
Pally = rogue
Druid = rogue
Druid = pimp
