raid-ui
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Reader UI of the Week: Enter the box with Oakdusa's raiding UI
Each week, WoW Insider and Mathew McCurley bring you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com, and follow Mathew on Twitter. Functional isn't always beautiful. All of you should go out to your vehicles in your driveways or parking structures and look at the floor mats. I guarantee that your car is a wreck. If you've got kids, don't even get up from the seat; we've all been in your car. Functional, but not going to win any beauty contests. I'm featuring Oakdusa's UI because it made me incredibly nostalgic for the days of the original World of Warcraft and its eternal predecessor, EverQuest. The EQ user interface was this odd creation, living in the realm of "this sounds like a great idea on paper because people enjoy the comforts of realism in a fantasy world." What an MMO's UI fundamentally had to have was not defined yet, not in the modern setting, until World of Warcraft came along.
Enter at Your Own Rift: One month in, how's the game?
Snakes -- they're the one thing in RIFT that I absolutely detest, not because they're dangerous or scary, but because they refuse to drop the last snake tear that I need for my critter tears collection. I've killed dozens, perhaps even hundreds, but every time, I walk away empty-handed. Oh sure, every now and then, one will give off that sparkle effect when it has loot, but it's always just the morale-crushing snake skin. I have killed so many snakes that I could probably string them together and encircle the world of Telara three times. Instead, I'll step away from my snake-slaughter to report on the news from Telara. It's been a month since the head-start launch, and already we've seen several major changes. Read on for a my mini-progress-report on public grouping, security, training dummies, and my incredible shrinking armor.
Addon Spotlight: 4.0.1 UI improvements
Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. This week, we discuss some of the UI changes in Patch 4.0.1. Did you all have a fun time watching the BlizzCon coverage over the weekend? Exciting times, yes? Surprisingly, there was a pretty big user interface announcement amidst the hectic lore discussions, log-in screens and worgen cinematics. We'll get to that in time, of course. Patch 4.0.1 brought some awesome new features to World of Warcraft that many people have emailed me asking about. What's the deal with built-in Power Auras? Have you seen the new raid UI and raid frames? Was there something about Atlasloot? All of these things will get answered today, as we take a look at some of the new stock addon and UI features in the WoW stock user interface. I'll even give my own little review of things. Sound good? It better, because this ship is setting sail right ... now.
Purists rejoice!
To me, there are 3 types of WoW players out there: the Purists, the Moderates, and the Borg. The first group swears off any addons that aren't expliticly required by their guilds. You'll see them writhe in pain as they download the latest version of Omen. I'm probably in the Moderates group. If it's a useful addon, I'm happy to install it, but I'm mindful of what a drain on my system some of them can be. The Borg pretty much have every addon they've ever seen mentioned. Trivia game? Got it! Chat mod that moves all my channels into new windows (which you can actually do on your own, kk)? It's right here! Well, with Patch 2.4, the Purists are getting an upgrade to the default Raid UI. Rislyn says "The Raid UI now can display the range of players relative to you. The option to enable this is in the Party & Raid section of the UI Options." Now, this functionality has been available via RaidRangeAid V2 for a long time now, but personally I never understood why it wasn't built in to begin with. I mean, my spells always know who's close enough, so why not my frames? Besides the Purists, I think this will mostly benefit the raid's dps and tanks since most don't need a super powerful Raid UI to just check who's dead. I can see this helping the raid leads see at a glance who's at the start point after a wipe before rolling out the ready check. Mages could use the default UI to decurse since it already handles debuff indication. And I'm not talking about just PvE raids. I can see this helping in BG's, too. From a healing standpoint, I don't see much change. If you're already using the default UI, then you'll have the added bonus of beig more effective. If you're using one of a number of Raid UI addons, you're not going to give up the functionality and style of those for the default. I think a lot more than range would be needed before you start to see healing converts. What kind of addon player are you? Will this change make you go back to the default Raid UI or were you using it already? [Thanks to Tam.Zed for the tip!]
