08 September 2008

Hopeful UI Changes

Blizzard is promising a lot with the coming expansion, and it seems to be the big thing everyone wants to know about. What kind of raids, what kind of zomg purplez, what kind of monsters. . .

The thing that I don't hear anything about (possibly with good reason) is the UI. I've heard about a built-in threat meter, but no other real changes to the interface. Is it because they don't want to increase the requirements on the system any more than they have to with the new content? I'm not sure, but from what I understand unless you have hundreds of addons, or a really old computer, the load on the system isn't that big.

If they're trying to keep the UI open for 3rd party developing, what's stopping that if additional functionality is incorporated in the base UI? I would love to see some kind of action bar flexibility and more mobile frames. (In addition to the promised threat meter) Other than these, what kind of UI mods are there? Sure, some mail things and specialized things for inventory and auctions, but all-in-all I think the most pervasive ones are covered under frames and bars.

At any rate, I'm really hoping they imbed some of these. I would also like to see a default "DKP" system that could be overridden if your guild chose to. I just don't think that many guilds I've been in have been "fair" with loot, instead favoring the guild master/officers/friends. It sounds (from what I've heard) like Warhammer is instituting something like this with their public quests, so that whoever contributes the most gets the most out of the reward.

We'll see how it all shakes out, but here's hoping!

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