SLUTMOGS: Or, how I learned to love the bikini-armor
Article and Illustrations By Heidi Stetzer
The term ‘slutmog’, a portmanteau of slut and transmogrification (a fancy word for changing), is the unofficial descriptor for any armor set in World of Warcraft (WoW) that’s heavy on skin, light on armor. There’s other ways to put it—skimpy mogs, chainmail bikini, bikini armor—but none of them are as specific to WoW and as all-encompassing as slutmog. Though the roots of the first half of the term are sexual in nature, wearing a slutmog doesn’t denote anything promiscuous about the player or character in the same way that wearing a wifebeater doesn’t suggest any predilections towards violence. And I, a 20-something woman who spent my teenage years browsing tumblrs such as thehawkeyeinitiative (aiming to highlight back-breaking and gratuitous titty poses in comic books) and bikiniarmorbattledamage (poking fun at the risks of being a half-naked warrior woman in fantasy), absolutely love slutmogs.
I’ve played WoW since the beginning, mooching off of my dad’s account when I was still in elementary school. The game’s got a long history, reaching back over 15 years with 8 expansions under its belt, and as the changing nature of women in both the fantasy genre and video games has shifted wildly since its inception it’s only natural that how they depicted these women in art and in-game would change as well. The character of Jaina, for example, started off in a midriff-baring robe despite her position as a leader of an influential port city and eventual archmage (she only lost the exposed belly in Battle for Azeroth, the expansion released in 2018). And though Sylvanas’s earliest look was a somber cuirass and skirt, fitting for an undead leader forsaken by her former people and bitter to the world, her most iconic rendition is arguably the full-on metal bikini and thong from Wrath of the Lich King to Legion (2008 to 2016, respectively). I was glad to see the updated models for Jaina and Sylvanas, since their designs had always struck me as both impractical and ill-fitting for their characters, not to mention odd when set against their male counterparts of kings and chieftains in full armor; WoW is a franchise that conveys narrative through the bombastic, cartoon-book inspired visuals, and no amount of respectful quest text or imposing dialogue can overshadow first impressions.
At the same time, I’ve spent thousands of gold and god knows how many hours farming for armor in WoW that could be called revealing at best, ridiculous at worst. I (inadvertently, mind) broke up an entire guild through my vehement defense of wearing slutmogs. I’ve made it a game to figure out how much skin I can have exposed to the Azerothian elements as I run around on my overwhelmingly female cast of characters. If you show me a screenshot of any plate bikini chestpiece in-game, I can tell you where it’s from and how hard it’d be to get it. I’m not even attracted to women—I get nothing attraction-wise from seeing the pixels of my character’s butt free for the world to see. Slutmogs are great, I hate seeing female story characters in any sort of revealing, impractical armor, and these things aren’t mutually exclusive.
To explore this dissonance, we have to step back through the history of slutmogs and gendered armor in WoW as a whole. The second part of the term—mog—comes from transmogrification, or transmog for short, a word pinned to the cosmetic appearance-switching mechanic introduced at the tail end of WoW’s 4th expansion, Cataclysm. Prior to transmog, there was no way to wear custom armor sets in actual gameplay. During Burning Crusade, WoW’s second expansion, the term ‘clown suit’ described how garish and unmatched the brightly colored and eclectic gear from questing and dungeons looked. Though future expansions introduced coordinated and more muted gear sets, purposefully designed to look halfway decent even if you were wearing mismatched pieces, part of the prestige of achieving a full armor set from current content was being able to both look cool and be competitive in gameplay.
That’s not to say there was no way to have neat, cosmetic-only sets. Trust me— the only reason I play any game these days is to force it to be an over glorified dress-up simulator. Plenty of poor and common quality gear existed only to wear cosmetically, like the kaldorei hanboks or once-valuable Twill set. You couldn’t go out and collect ten boar asses wearing these, but that wasn’t the point—they filled the roleplay (RP) niche for the MMORPG it is. I started playing seriously in Cataclysm, before they added transmog, and my banks and bags were full of completely useless armor that I kept only because it made me happy to see my character idling around in the outfits. I spent hours running outdated dungeons just to collect full sets of recolored gear, fully aware that I’d never have any real reason to use the items beyond treating my character as a furry mannequin. I wasn’t alone in this, either—once I joined the roleplaying community, this changed into putting together the perfect outfit that would fit my character’s personality and day to day needs in the same way that a costume designer pieces together outfits for the stage.
Transmog changed everything. Now, all of the saved armor pieces could be switched in and out on a whim. Certain sets, like the Black Mageweave sets, were a meme of easy-to-obtain slutmoggery. Unique robes modeled after Leia’s bikini from Return of the Jedi became and remain popular, partly for the bright colors (pink! cyan! gold!) and partly because...well. They’re modeled after Leia’s bikini. But transmog also let players avoid types of armor they didn’t like. If you hated even a shred of exposed skin on a frontline character, good news! You’d never have to wear something you don’t like again.
But the armor wasn’t equal. For all of the low-resolution chainmail bikinis and cloth panties and thigh-highs have a most curious property: if you wear them as a male character, they change into mild full-coverage chestplates and nondescript pants. When I first started playing, I was upset that the female armor didn’t look like the male’s. Now, I’m angry the other way around! Before they added the option to just not wear a chest piece, it was exceedingly difficult to craft a slutmog for any male character, while female characters had the options of both old skimpy armor from past expansions and less-impractical upgrades from more current content, as WoW devs had moved further and further away from gendered differences in armor. Currently, out of almost 500 unique pairs of cloth leg pieces, only 2 of them would be at place in a male slutmog. Both are low-resolution, from vanilla, and honestly? Pretty ugly.
There’s a few outliers to the rule, like a questing set from Battle for Azeroth that’s the same on both genders and more like a miniskirt than anything else, but they’re few and far between. It’d be easy to argue that armor that’s revealing and impractical has no place in a world of war, but WoW hasn’t ever taken itself very seriously and it’s a bit late to start now. Arguments against impractical armor for story characters don’t apply here, since player characters have something story characters don’t - agency. By choosing to put my character in a silly slutmog, I’m not communicating anything but to my fellow players that I think it’s a cute outfit. By putting major female characters in silly outfits, it continues a tradition of viewing women in video games as eye candy in a way their male counterparts aren’t. With transmog, players have the choice to wear practically anything they want, and I’d love to see a return of excessively skimpy, stylish armor. Just make it gender-neutral this time.
I’m glad for all of the strides that WoW’s made in terms of gendered representation, such as placing female leaders at the forefront in their most recent expansions and introducing compelling female characters who don’t always fit the mold of what a female body should look like. There’s been great strides in gender-neutral armor and outfits, even if I yearn for the simpler and flashier pieces of the past. I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone seeking meaningful representation, as the story’s a hot mess and the Rule of Cool trumps all, but progress is progress. But honestly? Sometimes, no matter if my character is male or female, I just want to go kill a god with their entire ass out. Sometimes, they just gotta wear the slutmog.
Heidi Stetzer (she/her) is an artist based out of southeastern Minnesota. When not drowning under studio work, her ramblings and art can be found on Twitter under @SaintEtzer.