About half a year ago I show WoW to a friend. One of her first concerns were the UI and that everything looks small. I didn’t get it and wrote it off as just a personal preference. I told her about addons but she’s new and didn’t want to figure out that addon business.
Up until Classic came out, I had simply grown accustomed to it, but coming back to retail from classic I’m considering downloading an addon to change it. The action bar is small, very small. Many of the images are hard to make out what they are. The text is also very small. It seems to be designed to leave a lot of open space to fit addons onto the screen.
Again, I can always change it. But after a break from retail I am seeing why its default UI can be hard to look at for a new player, and many won’t really think to change it.
The base UI is terrible for a multitude of reasons, most of them surrounding the idea of conveying information. You have your health bar in the top left, your target to the right of that, your minimap all the way on the opposite corner, your bags on the bottom right, your bars bottom center, chat bottom left, and all the shenanigans you need to be avoiding in the middle of your screen while also trying to do things like track enemy buffs, your buffs, etc.
It’s really nonsensical, but that’s why we have addons in the first place. I thought about downsizing my UI a bit. Making it so I have less visible. But there’s a few I’d have to keep like OmniCC. I can’t imagine WoW without OmniCC at this point simply because of the peripheral queues.
Edit: Here’s an example of my UI now.
https://imgur.com/9gvlyM0
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I use around 70-80 addons to overhaul the base UI and add tonnes of other QoL features. Welcome to the club.
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons
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UI is bad but not really for the reasons you said. sounds like a UI scale issue based on what you are saying.
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Close your eyes an faceroll on the keyboard 
Am I the only one who actually likes the default UI? 
I use a dps tracker add on and a world quest one, oh, and the auctioneer one. And… that’s it.
Maybe I’m just weird.
Edit: Oh I forgot the raid boss add on. I use one of those too.
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I’ve seen some of the screenshots of the customized UIs but it’s always seemed so cluttered to me. I like having very little extraneous clutter on my screen so default UI has always worked just fine for me.
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Base UI would be fine if it had an option to place everything int he center.
Judge mine?
https://i.imgur.com/UJdzkmj.jpg
I usually shrink the chatbox if I’m busy with PvE stuff.
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I’d like it more if both the buffs and minimap were also draggable (in addition to unit frames and chatbox). But since they are not, addons to the rescue.
Other than the health and mana bars being a little odd to me, it seems fine. I’m just so used to the default one I guess after 15 years of it. lol
I tried ElvUI once. For about fourty-five minutes. After extensive reading and YouTube videos trying to figure out how to set it up I uninstalled it and never looked at another UI add-on again. So I’m hardly qualified to pass judgement on anyones UI. XD
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Yeahhhhh.
If I don’t have them as gigantic orbs/bars, then I tend to not pay attention to them.
-whistles innocently-
I’m not too fond of ElvUI either.
I try to keep mine fairly simple so it’s easy to work with and pleasing to the eye.
I actually like the default UI, the only thing I use to change it is Titan Panel :v
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I use a bunch of addons, but none of them change the UI. I’m fine with it.
I tried using one that allows you to move the bars and stuff, but I must be dumb cause I just couldn’t figure it out.
I mean I am in the extreme minority here but I use the default UI.
I have a lot of addons as well that allow me to see the info I want where I want.
But the actual dragon framed bars etc I still use.
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Nope, I like the standard UI too.
Matter of fact, I only use add-ons that use the standard UI interface or the same look and feel.
Yay I’m not alone in my weirdness! 
I use the default UI and then Deadly Boss Mods to get my slow keister out of the shiny and Recount to reality check my rotation.
Then again I don’t do group activities aside from world bosses so I could see folks who do raid and similar activities wanting add-ons to give them every possible edge.
And here I am thinking the default UI is too big.
I try to keep mine as minimal as possible. I use an addon to to rearrange and shrink action bars and bind keys more easily. That’s about it. I don’t need a DPS meter or any of that. The smaller and less obtrusive the better.
Edit: if anyone has suggestions to make it even tinier and less in my way, I’m all ears.
You can scale the size of the base UI in the settings…