These MMO players are going naked to maximise their framerate

Groups of MMO players are going into battle against high-level bosses in nothing but their undies in an attempt to gain a performance advantage.

In a tweet, one Blue Protocol player showed off a screenshot of four underwear-clad avatars charging towards an enemy. Their caption (translated by Automaton) reads "the god-tier game Blue Protocol gets more stable FPS when you take off your character's clothes, so hardcore players are going naked to do difficult battles."

My initial thought was that you'd need to get a hell of a lot more frames to make the loss of equipment worth it, but Blue Protocol doesn't have an armor system. Clothes are purely cosmetic, so going into battle without them doesn't confer any disadvantage. And on the flip side, the sheer amount going on in Blue Protocol's biggest late game raids means that any boost to your frame rate is likely to give your in-game performance a serious boost too.

Unfortunately, evidence of that improved performance means that hordes of players are running around Blue Protocol's shared spaces wearing far too little, lending a slight 'nudist colony' vibe to proceedings.

It seems that the exact reason why clothing causes such a slow-down is unclear - even the person who originally tweeted about Blue Protocol's latest fashion trend says that they joined in without even knowing why they were doing so. Still, it's not the first time something like this has happened recently - last year, modders shaved the characters of Final Fantasy Origins: Stranger of Paradise to help boost frames in that game. 

Some of the other best MMORPGs out there also have people going naked - but usually for very different reasons.