Playing WoW... Naked

This is part TWO of our Naked Noobs interview. To return to (or view if you got here a differnt way) to part one click right here to be wisked back a page.

What support have you received for your nakedness?

Somewhat of a mixed bag here. Firstly people who have read the forum thread have been very strongly in favour of what has become known as the “Gutrot Method”. Gutrot (the original “Naked Noob”, currently a level 63 troll warrior, bald and apparently albino in appearance) had a thread on the old wow-europe forums, and when it transferred over to the new forums he was about level 21 WoW Europe Forums Link .

There are a few negative comments, mostly along the lines of “how can you prove this claim” – one even said that unless he sees FRAPS footage of the whole levelling from day one he refuses to believe it, God alone knows how big that file would be! Since the Armory feature however you can see that all his weapon skills are at 1 (apart from thrown where trolls get 5 racial points). Forum threads on the EU forums (may be different in the US) are limited to 25 pages, so when this thread reached this milestone it stopped growing – within a few minutes there was a new thread posted demanding that the mods allow it to continue on, which they duly did. Same happened at 50 pages, and currently it is 60 pages and over 210,000 views! It is hardly ever off the front couple of pages of the General forum (the chap behind Gutrot has been offline working away from home for the last few weeks so there hasn’t been much news, hence it has dropped a bit at the moment but it should be back soon). There have been a couple of interesting developments – Gutrot has some videos on youtube http://youtube.com/profile?user=GutrotAP (copy and paste, YouTube may not be for all ages) if you want to see how it’s done! This guy is looking for a fun way to play WoW Europe Forums Link.

One thread started by someone wanting to find an interesting way of levelling up that would be “even more challenging than the Gutrot method” – he is now trying to do the whole game underwater!  WoW Europe Forums Link  And you think we are mad!

In-game has been interesting: some people recognise Katolikk (presumably from reading the forums) and I often get /cheer or /salute from Alliance characters or a comment from Hordies. A lot of people come up close and “inspect” me then ask if I have really levelled up naked – most then ask “why” then say well done and go away. I have been asked a couple of times if I am actually sitting here naked playing the game (not very often, it’s not exactly Florida here!) It can be difficult to get groups to do things – obviously unless you recognize the name you wouldn’t know from the usual /who search that Kat is naked and it can be quite funny to see the comments when I turn up. I have a couple of non-naked in-game friends who know about my little peccadillo (!!) and are quite happy to group with me but by and large Kat isn’t popular for elite quests – it’s fine if we succeed but if we fail at all it is always my fault; despite the warrior pulling all those mobs at once we would surely have been OK if I had a robe on. Yeah right.

Do you feel closer to WoW by increasing the challenge?

Not quite sure what you mean by this. If you mean do I feel more a part of it and less like I am just pressing buttons on a computer, I would say not really. The actual gameplay isn’t much different (in fact for a mage it’s hardly different at all) but in taking away the overemphasis on equipment in the game you do get something that feels a bit like a RP element. Most of the comments my clothed characters get are along the lines of “where did you get that bow/sword/polearm etc”, while the naked characters get more “how did you do this? Isn’t it difficult?” etc which I find much more interesting conversationally. I have never been concerned about getting the latest, fanciest equipment for my characters, even my lvl60s only have one piece each of their T1 armour sets and that was only because I was given them by a guildie who didn’t need them. On my clothed characters I have been known to wear robes several levels below stuff I have been getting as quest rewards simply because I liked the colour of them. At the end of the day I am playing for fun and I am not prepared to sit up all night doing instances for the umpteenth time just on the off-chance that I might get a pair of gloves that have one extra intelligence point than the ones I am wearing.

Will this naked run be the end of playing WoW on hard mode or will you be doing more things?

Will I set myself another challenge?: I have decided that now that Kat has reached lvl70 he is going to put on some clothes and go kick some butt. Then I have another 5 naked characters to level up, and I still have all my Alliance characters to go back to – two lvl60s to take into Outland and do the Alliance quests. I have just renewed my subscription to Wow for another 6 months, but then I may take a break and go play something else for a while, maybe Age of Conan will be out, or I have heard good things about LOTRO. Or I may have got a job and not have time to play at all!

Can you tell us a little bit more about the Naked Noobs?

Our merry little band of naturists is called the Naked Noobs, which often gets a comment from passers-by (one character in Orgrimmar threatened to report me to a GM for my guildname – I said go ahead but you might want to check the 60-page post on page 1 of the general forum first, he returned about ten minutes later and apologised!). We have had over 120 members, but a lot join then lose interest after a few weeks/levels and drop out. Currently we have 79 members. The only 2 characters above lvl36 at the moment are Gutrot (63) and Katolikk (70), and of the next 5 in the guild list by level, 4 belong to me (there’s a warrior called Aon who is in there at level 34ish, he is still quite active). Many joined for something fun to do just before the Burning Crusade came out, now they are off levelling up their mains, and may or may not come back sometime. We had one chap who got to level 19 then went to live in battlegrounds for months on end, I think he was the only Noob to get a pvp rank in the old system. We were thinking about renaming the guild, some of the possibles were Undressed for Success, Clothing Optional, Doesmybumlookbiginthis (my favourite), Vestmentally Challenged, Da Nood Doodz and several others I can’t remember off the top of my head but we haven’t done so (yet).

What would you change in WoW to make it more naked-friendly?

Firstly and most importantly get rid of Winterspring! It was cold here in the UK when I was levelling naked in Winterspring and (I’m not kidding) I was sitting in my chair shivering! More beach-type areas would be great!
Dragonsbreath chilli should have a chance to “backfire” on you, if you get my drift…not fire coming out of the mouth but more the other end, doing damage to armour-wearers and particularly plate-wearers…the phrase “like a fart in a spacesuit” comes to mind.

Fun bits of armour like the Lucky Fishing Hat – why do they have armour and stats? It’s not like anyone is wearing them for the stat bonus! Let them be armour and stat-free like the Ripped Ogre Loincloth!
Why can’t I enchant my fishing rod? It says I can use it as a 2H weapon, even has stat bonuses and a dps figure but I can’t make it glow?

I would like to thank Katolikk for taking the time to answer a few of our questions about playing WoW naked! If you have any questions for Katolikk please email me (email down below) and I'll forward them on to him. Thanks for reading!

Comments or questions? Email us ([email protected]) or post on our forums!