IMO, the original UI (character portaits and bars) was leaps and heads above the modern UI. The new one is stripped of character and does not feel as coherent as the original UI.
I can’t live without the Classic UI addon.
Blizzard, if you are going to cull it, at least allow us to have the old UI back in game.
EDIT to answer questions below.
I prefer the art and the compact bar/bag setting in the classic ui. Its less visual clutter in the center of the player space and I like the art surrounding the bars. The floating bars (no art) on the modern one just feel empty to me, soulless.
imgur /a/KHZbWsR
imgur /a/IPNzyjb
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Can you provide specific examples of how it was ahead of the modern UI?
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They have been very clear about this: any potential future changes to add-ons will be targeting specific functionality used in real time during combat.
They are not concerned about add-ons that change the UI.
And the modern UI still has character portraits with bars, so I have no idea what you’re talking about anyway.
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Even if they do, you can still recreate the Vanilla look in retail with Bartender.
you can copy paste the end of my links (I cant link on the forums) to imgur to see the differences between the UI’s
The old character portrait unit frames looked different from the new frames and I simply prefer that look.
Everything in your screenshots is reproducible in the modern UI, as far as I know.
If there’s anything specific (e.g. if you like the look of previous frames - what about them? Do they have corner radius applied? Is the color different?).
As-is it’s pretty much exactly the same.
The current text for the character and enemy bars is almost unreadable without eagle vision due to its having an outline. The UI design itself looks like Fisher Price created it. And the action bar artwork is less intricate and looks phoned in and additionally only shows for action bar 1, which clips into the other bars if using the 2x6 formation that is required in order to have the same padding in between the bars that the old bars had (the padding between bar 1 and 2, and 3 if using all three in stacked horizontal mode in 1x12 form is thicker than when setting the bars in 2x6 side by side to achieve a two bar, twelve wide formation).
The bags are also round, leaving gaps between them, making it more difficult to click them for those of us that physically need to for whatever reason, and are also not the same size as the backpack without addons, exacerbating that issue. I have to use ImproveAny just to get equal size bags. I can’t use addons like bagnon, etc. due to frequent taint making them unclickable in combat should taint occur. That’s why I can’t use the ClassicUI addon - taint is a death sentence for those that need to click as taint renders both action bars and bags unclickable until combat ends. Having the old UI as a built in option would eliminate the taint problem posed by addons.
For some of us things like this are pretty big accessibility barriers that can only be overcome with meticulously chosen addons, which limits what addons can feasibly be used.
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They are not even remotly the same. Did you look at both images? Save them, open them side by side. They are very different.
As I stated. The modern UI does not have the art around the action bars. The Bag/character/talent/achieve/collections/etc bar is different and feels out of place in the modern ui vs feeling like it was designe to fit there in the classic ui.
What they are saying is they prefer the worn metal look with patterning to look realistic rather than the Metro look and feel of the current ui.
If you open the mini Zone Map. It still has the default ui style compared to the rest of the ui. It is vastly different.
I personally think they should have kept it a toggle: Old style UI/New style UI.
I use consoleport, which has had a Metro look. The changes to the default UI don’t really bother me.
The action bar art can be enabled in edit mode in the modern UI for the primary bar.
However if you want a more comprehensive solution, Bartender4 apparently has presets that get you very close to the old setup - the top comment on this reddit thread has screenshots and instructions further down the conversation: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/ye534f/classic_ui_revert_addon_in_the_works/
I’m not sure if the micromenu looks the same in Shadowlands vs. Classic (they look pretty similar to me) but here’s an addon that restores the old-style micromenu: https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/sl-micro-menu
Hope that helps.