World of Warcraft's Jeff Kaplan previews Lich King UI changes

Lead designer for World of Warcraft Jeff Kaplan is the man to talk to if you want the inside scoop on the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King. So MTV Multiplayer did, asking after some information on upcoming changes to the popular game's UI. Already well known for having one of the slickest interfaces in online gaming, it sounds as if there are going to be a lot of great improvements coming with the new expansion. Unsurprisingly, many of the upcoming improvements are going to be based on popular fan-made mods. Kaplan describes his own mod usage like 'candy', with stretches of gratuitous mod downloading interspersed with 'vanilla UI' cleansing.

WoW Insider has been all over this stuff, noting plans for a token system that will replace badges and a set of tabs to allow easy access to mounts and vanity pets. They also reported on plans for a threat-meter style addition to the game, which Kaplan describes as more like an 'aura'. "We're going to display threat by a glowing unit frame. Like if you're glowing orange, you're really close to a 70% threat threshold, and then if you turn red it means you've pulled threat. Because that's really all people need in a raid is to be able to look and go, 'Hey the mage is orange.'" They also hope to put in some sort of coordinate system, and it even sounds like a form of QuestHelper-like functionality will find its way into the game. Kaplan notes that last will probably not see inclusion until the first post-expansion patch, but that's still some great news.

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