Anyone who has read my past UI posts, probably knows what to expect here. I’m a bit of a gusher when it comes to thanking the under-appreciated UI team for the steady stream of changes and updates this expansion.
I really don’t think the default UI devs get enough attention or appreciation for their work, which is usually overshadowed by content, class, and systems updates, to say nothing of the large contingent of players who use extensive UI add-ons and replacements. I’m not blaming those folks, but it’s just how it is, and many don’t notice or care as much about the quality-of-life updates happening within the default UI.
I’m one of those who greatly cares about the state of the default UI and all those little QoL niceties that are being added. I’ve run add-ons in the past (indeed, most of my history playing WoW has been with a few add-ons), but lately I find that I no longer prefer to run them at all, and want the 100% pure, clean, as-Blizzard-intended UI experience. Thanks to the work from the UI team, this is finally not only feasible for my style of play (AotC, KSM, and soloing), but it’s actually pleasant to use.
Specifically, I’d like to thank the team for a couple of things being updated in this new patch (10.1.5):
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New colorized system bar icons. It now fits better with the colorful and robust style of WoW artwork. Nice job!
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Updated hi-res artwork for the action hand cursor. I play with larger cursors, and the new hi-res art is a blessing for these. The action hand (for clicking on actionable world objects) was unfortunately left behind until this patch and it looked awful when scaled-up. Nice aesthetic fix!
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QoL updates for tmog farmers! Being able to track un-learned items is awesome. Nice work! This is actually something I hadn’t thought about before, but will be very useful as I try to complete old sets.
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More status bar objects (like breath and fatigue) being scalable. Making objects scalable is becoming increasingly important as display resolutions continue to increase.
These are just the things that jumped-out for me in the patch notes, but all the changes look great, thanks again!
As always, it wouldn’t be one of my UI posts without gently adding a few (hopefully modest) requests, as a default UI purist:
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I would love to see the cast bar also have the option to show total cast time along with the time remaining (which was added last patch). The problem with seeing only the remaining cast time is that it’s often so short that by the time you read the number, the cast is half finished. Being able to see the total cast time, however, is important because it informs you of any haste effects in-place and you can plan upcoming casts accordingly. Ideally, we should be able to see both (in the form of “remaining / total” similar to how Quartz displays it).
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It would be very handy to be able to see the technical info (FPS, latency, and download info) in a permanently-open frame rather than the current mouse-over. I find myself often mousing-over the menu button way down in the corner just to read my latency. I’d really just like the option to see it on-screen at all times, as we can do with FPS.
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It would also be very handy to be able to see a couple of built-in player stats such as average item level and ratings as part of the mouse-over tooltip. Yes, this is basically what the RaidCheck extension to Details does, as well as Raider.io, but why not just have this information available to everyone? Now, I realize that there might be some hesitation on Blizzard’s part because perhaps they don’t want players over-emphasizing gear and ratings, but I think it’s fair to say that ship has sailed. Sometimes we just want to know how our group-mates are geared and be able to see the relevant (M+ or PvP) ratings. That’s not always a toxic thing. Sometimes it’s just to see if we ourselves are geared and rated appropriately for the group we’re in.
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The map pin is a promising start to functionality that really needs to include multiple map pins along with coordinate support. (Basically, TomTom.) Players and guides are extremely helpful at providing coordinates, and it’s high time the default map pins supported the ability to simply paste these coordinates in and get multiple waypoints set.
Those are all the suggestions I have at the moment. I’m sure there is a whiteboard full of items to be worked on, and perhaps it includes some of these things. I’m certain I’m not the only one to benefit from these ideas, and hope these items are sensible and common enough to be worthy of consideration.
Thanks again for all your recent work, UI team.