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Reader UI of the Week: Dark and handsome
Welcome back to the second instalment of the new version of Reader UI of the week! Thanks so much for all your comments on last week's column, I'm doing my best to take them on board, but if there are things I'm failing at, do make suggestions! Feedback is always welcome. This week, we're going to take a look at Synchrony's UI, which he sent in via email. If you want to do the same, please do, drop me a line by clicking the link, or send an email to olivia@wowinsider.com with some high quality screenshots of your UI, and let me know what addons you're using, why you've gone for the layout and look that you've chosen, what you like about it, and what you are still working on. UIs are always a work in progress! Anyhow, let's get down to business.
Reader UI of the Week: In the Interest of Honesty
Welcome to the latest iteration of Reader UI of the Week. I'm your new host, and we're back thanks to popular demand. Well, frankly, the popular demand was for Mat McCurley's column. I've taken the reins and am hoping to at least hold a candle to Mat's work. I've been reading back over the past years' Reader UI of the Week columns, and trying to work out what it was that people enjoyed. It's a little bit of judgement, a chunk of advice, a little bit of looking at the good and bad sides of UIs and a big bit of discussion. It seems obvious to me that UIs are intensely personal. There's no right or wrong answer to the question "What's a perfect UI?" The question, in my opinion, should be rephrased to "What's your perfect UI?" Nonetheless, we all like to judge. It's rather like the WoW equivalent of a home improvement show, this column. And on those shows, I always want to see the presenter's house. So that's what we're doing today. The above image is my own UI. This column has been a great motivator to fix up some of the UI elements on my own screen that have been bothering me since the start of Mists, but that I've been too lazy to repair!
The Tattered Notebook: Celebrating the search for the perfect UI
EQInterface and EQ2Interface have been stalwart sidekicks for me through the years, and it's great to see them expand into other games. They now have a library of UIs for several MMOs and have really helped put player-made UIs on the map. EverQuest II's site had a news article announcing that the collective UI site, now called MMOUI.com, is celebrating its 10th birthday this week, so I thought I'd get in the celebratory spirit by highlighting a few iconic favorites and taking a brief look at the state of the user interface in MMOs. I've included picks from three SOE MMOs: EverQuest, Vanguard, and of course, EverQuest II. In this week's Tattered Notebook, we'll put down our macros, take a break from resizing windows, and look at the quest for the perfect UI.
The Light and How to Swing It: 4 necessary elements of a successful tank UI
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. When it comes to a custom UI, information is king. Sure, there are ancillary benefits, like the pursuit of a pretty user interface, or a minimalistic one, or (be still, my beating heart) both. But when you get down to the real meat and potatoes of building a UI, the most successful are the ones that are most effective at presenting information to the player in an efficient and useful manner. And of course, many players are perfectly happy with the stock UI, which is totally fine if that's your cup of tea. For many others, myself included, the preference is for a custom viewport into Azeroth that can distill everything at your disposal into a package that can be quickly digested by the brain, as well as all sorts of bells, whistles, and dinglehoppers that make for a more aesthetically pleasing interface. Because that's half the fun.
Reader UI of the Week: 3D spell effects eye candy
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. Now this is awesome and share-worthy to the extreme: a UI built around incorporating 3D spell effects from WoW into the UI elements that support them. Using a combination of WeakAuras, ingenuity, and lots of beer, Kait:Auras was born. Is it impractical? Yes. Is it awesome? Double yes. If you're going for eye candy, pack it with sugar and calories. Just when you think you've seen the last out of the World of Warcraft UI, someone comes along and breaks the game with a poison swapper or allows you to draw a phallus army all over Dalaran. That sense of adventure, that the whole game could come crashing down at any point because of some enterprising young upstart, was what fueled the fun of the addon community and development -- the off-chance that your addon, in the grand history of addons, would change the world. Making the game better was one thing, but the unintended and often hilarious consequences of giving Blizzard such a (relatively weak) headache is kind of fun.
My Mists of Pandaria beta UI is almost perfect
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. This is exciting. The very first Reader UI of the Week from the Mists of Pandaria beta, and it gets to be my own. In fact, the UI that I've created in the beta is a bit of a dream team, fantasy UI that has been bouncing around in my head ever since World of Warcraft went live on the first day. You see, it's taken more than seven years for this feature to be developed and implemented in the game, and things will never be the same once the newest expansion launches. I've been waiting for the ability to move my player and unit frames for a long, long time. The upper-left location of the screen was never my favorite area to slap a health and mana bar. I've put up with it over the years and have changed the feature wherever and whenever possible, but betas are not usually addon-enabled until the later days. Until then, I must make do. These days, however, Mists of Pandaria looks to bring us some beautiful new changes to the user interface and my own sanity, giving me the ability to change some of the fundamental aspects of the player and target frames. With just two small movements and two quick options, the World of Warcraft default user interface moved leaps and bounds forward in the race to compete with my custom setup. And this fact makes me wonder if the UI will one day be seen as analogous to transmogrification, where Blizzard thinks that people can't handle one thing but actually crave the other.
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.
Reader UI of the Week: Bryce and Elv's UI stand against any foe
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. As many of you already know, my go-to recommendation for pre-fab compilation user interfaces is ElvUI. I love this addon pack because the skinning of the interface keeps the game uniform with easy-to-read fonts and lots of information for both the novice and expert, and it's updated enough that, for my purposes, I've never really worried. Bryce's user interface starts with an ElvUI foundation and moves toward full-featured completion with a bevy of new addons not included in the pack. Filling out the areas that ElvUI doesn't necessarily cover, Bryce has complemented the addon pack with addons necessary to raid and function, as opposed to addons that skin or change the aesthetics of the user interface. Here's the part that interested me about the aesthetics issue: None of the addons that Bryce added to his setup changed the way ElvUI actually looks. Sometimes you get to talk about behind-the-scenes addons. Let's have fun with it.
Reader UI of the Week: Neutral elements and goldfish
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. What do you get when you cross readers with UIs? Reader UI of the Week, of course. Want to show off your own interface creations? Send an email, screenshots, and anything else you'd like to readerui@wowinsider.com, and you might see your submission right here. That's totally awesome. This week's discussion is all about Alvala and a changing multi-spec setup that eventually had to accomodate the healer lifestyle. With a flair for keeping things neat and tidy, as well as introducing neutral elements that span each class, spec, and role for every character, Alvala has created a UI that works for pretty much anything she can think of with room to grow. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but at the end of the article today, I talk about how much I like the little WeakAuras goldfish that Alvala has on her UI. It's pretty much one of my favorite things. Must have caught me at a good time, little goldfish.
Reader UI of the Week: Vhei's Cataclysm 2.0 UI packed up for you
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. When a beautiful user interface hits the site and people ask where to get it, I have the sad news that not everyone makes their user interfaces available online. The process done correctly, mind you, is a relatively complicated one -- there is a lot that goes into it, especially for a first-timer. So while it is not a requirement to make your user interface available when submitting to Reader UI of the Week, it's always a pleasure when one does come down the pike. Vhei's user inteface creations have always been fun to showcase because of his talent and attention to detail. Lots of user interfaces out there do what his does, as do all of ours for the most part, but the construction of the whole is where I am always impressed with his creations. I've just gotten an email from Vhei letting me know that his last UI, the Cataclysm 2.0 UI, has been released as a package that you can download and try out. He's even got a video on YouTube explaining the process. Let's find out more, shall we?
Reader UI of the Week: Vondak knows presentation is everything
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. Welcome back to Reader UI of the Week, WoW Insider's showcase of the community's user interfaces. I'm looking for Mists of Pandaria beta UIs. Enough people are in the beta now playing around with monks and their kit, so let's see what people are doing with monk abilities. Whatever it is, I want you to show it off. Let's get a jump on the expansion while we talk about real-world examples from people's beta screenshots. That's not this week, however. A special treat is lined up for you today. Vondak, a survival hunter from the Nesingwary (US) realm, has decided to let his character speak for themselves about their user interface. In lieu of a reader email and submission this week, we have a reader gallery, as Vondak takes you through the intricate parts of the "high and tight" setup.
Reader UI of the Week: Puddinpop adds on with a larger screen
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. Adding to UI compilations is a fine art we talk about on occasion here at Reader UI of the Week. Some things are easy to fit into a preexisting setup, whereas others are much more difficult, unable to fit in a premade UI's rigorous framework. Puddinpop, a blood elf paladin from the Saurfang server, has submitted a UI that features many additions to a basic RealUI setup smashed together with some of the design elements of LUI. On top of the challenge of expanding on work already existing on the screen, Puddinpop takes the challege a step forward with a gigantic monitor. Sometimes it is just as difficult to design a UI around a much larger monitor as it is with a laptop or smaller screen. Many of the same concerns are present, just in a slightly different way. Fonts may be too small versus too large, UI elements might just never be noticed, and you could actually be straining your eyes to read too-small text. Big monitors can be a burden.
Reader UI of the Week: Navigator plots a course to UI satisfaction
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. Navigator of the Exodar not only has one of the coolest name-plus-title combinations I've seen yet (don't be sad, all of you Professor Oaks out there) but a slick UI to match. It's a little crowded, to be sure, but sometimes things are crowded. Sometimes we like a little bit of a lot going on. Also, I'm going to assume that you're going with the Warhammer 40k-type Navigator in that you've just plotted the course and not actually piloted the ship, because the pilot has a lot of explaining to do. I think that I just strained a nerd muscle. As for the title today, again I am fooled by my own supposed cleverness at four in the morning when the title of this particular article came to mind. Navigator's UI works for all three specs to accommodate any and every alt, as well as a large enough healing array for competent raid healing. The double chat box is also a great idea that a lot of people don't necessarily take advantage of. Let's see if we can work something out.
Reader UI of the Week: Laar goes with a tri-spec setup
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. Oh boy, do I have a treat for you all this week. Laar is our UI subject this week, and I was immediately impressed with not only Laar's courageousness to tri-spec for a heroic raiding guild but at the ease with which the World of Warcraft user interface turns on a dime. No other MMO UI out there can transform itself so quickly to become something utterly new from spec to spec. Going tri-spec is daunting. I don't know if that's the type of dedication my brain can handle these days. College, maybe. Back then, I could multitask. Now I'm an old, sad man. Don't let my shame and sadness get you down. Let's take a look at this awesome UI!
Reader UI of the Week: Saintstryfe's healing UI learns from other worlds
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. World of Warcraft has me spoiled in regards to MMO user interfaces. While I don't like bringing up other games in my columns, it is almost necessary at times when talking about the overarching themes of the genre, something I am passionate about. Take, for instance, the original Bioware stance on DPS meters ("there will be none") and the subsequent reversal of such a plan -- I would have preferred gun-stickage. Competition drives innovation in our marketplace, and other MMOs have been stepping up their games in recent years in regard to almost every aspect of the MMO experience. Yet WoW's UI is still leaps and bounds more customizable, flexible, and vibrant than a majority of the AAA titles on the shelf. What the heck is going wrong with the MMO industry and the UI? The Old Republic had to patch in basic UI features. RIFT, while capable in and of itself with UI customization, still suffers from constraints. The original EverQuest made you look at a book to regenerate mana faster. I realize it's not the same world as WoW, but it's still a part of the package. ... which brings me to today's interface and topic. Saintstryfe may have not intended this submission to spur the topic that it did, but I don't care. Saintstryfe, you're riding the Reader UI train now, and this train's conductor doesn't slow for no. One. No one. Except myself. I'm the conductor. Other games reveal aspects of World of Warcraft that otherwise would be left unnoticed due to repetition and routine -- a foil, if you will, to the idiosyncracies of World of Wacraft ... and maybe insight into how to fix them.
Submit your user interface to Reader UI of the Week
World of Warcraft's user interface is one of the most awesome features of the game. Where else in MMO-land can you find UIs as diverse, creative, and different than those of all of your peers and community pals? Here on WoW Insider, we have a little column where your work gets shown off and discussed amongst our own little community, and we want your submissions. With Mists of Pandaria on the way and some time to prepare for the coming storm, now is the best time to work out some of the kinks in your user interface. Always wanted to try a new spell timer? Thinking about ditching one DPS meter for another? Do it now, when you're just kind of hanging out. What about all those old-new players who are coming back because of the new Scroll of Resurrection? What types of user interface concerns do they have? At Reader UI of the Week, we love to help you with your UI design woes, discussing ways to change or adjust your UI to get it to look a little bit cleaner, a little bit smoother, or just plain nicer. If you're going to send in a call for help, please be as descriptive as possible. Submit your user interface to Reader UI of the Week by emailing, coincidentally, readerui@wowinsider.com. Here are some tips to remember and information to include when you are submitting your UI or call for help: Include "Reader UI of the Week" in the subject of your email. If it's not there, your email might not get through. Pictures are good, and the bigger, the better. You don't have to write a novel, but definitely write enough that readers get a sense of why you did what you did. What are your biggest priorities when putting together your UI? Did I mention that pictures are awesome? If you are submitting a user interface that is modified off of an existing UI compilation, tell me what you changed and what was important about those changes. Anyone can go and just pick up a premade compilation. Again, submit your user interfaces to readerui@wowinsider.com, and show off your work! Interested in getting the most out of your user interface? Come back once a week for more examples of reader UIs. For more details on individual addons, check out Addon Spotlight, or visit Addons 101 for help getting started.
Does gender matter when designing your user interface?
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. Our interface today comes from lady gamer Rinjichan. I would not be so inclined to point out that Rinjichan is a woman if Rinjichan herself did not make it a subject of conversation. Why, you would ask, would a discussion of gender be relevant to a discussion about user interfaces? Plenty of reasons, actually. Do genders approach user interfaces differently? Do men and women identify different elements of the UI as important or relevant? Go beyond the stereotypical pink bottom bar and look at the placement of addons, the structure of the buttons, and the overall layout. These are the things that interest me, as well as whether or not a user interface can have gender ascribed to it.
Reader UI of the Week: Magistrum's basic setup makes great addon starting place
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. One of the most amazing things about World of Warcraft's addons is that you're always learning something new or adapting your interface to the new standards because you can build on top of what's already there. Sometimes you do the opposite -- take all of the information you've learned and processed but strip it all away and start from stratch. It's liberating to re-form your UI with years of potentially new and useful knowledge and expectations when going to build your legacy UI. Magistrum sent me a screenshot for his mage's new UI. I looked at the picture first as I usually do when picking out a UI for the column and saw a very basic design that didn't jump out at me while being far from offensive. After reading the short email, it dawned on me that I was looking at this UI all wrong. This wasn't a first attempt at cleanliness with a new player, hitting the game for the first time. No, this was years of learning and understanding what makes your own personal UI yours. The little pieces are all in place where you want them.
Reader UI of the Week: Deadpool's multipurpose hunter 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. While I was doing archaeology the other day (Is this seriously all I do anymore? What have I become?), pieces of my UI became apparently ... messy. I didn't like the feeling. Something felt off, weird, crazy, or ready to blow. While many people lauded archaeology addons, I only scoffed. Now, I feel like I might need one or two. This week's reader submission is from Deadpool, a worgen hunter with a knack for stylish looks and stylish UIs. His setup is simple and has a decent amount of empty space and buffer room, which puts me in a happy place. I like relaxed UIs. More isn't always better, especially in a game like WoW where the most complex the task usually has a super-simple answer.
Reader UI of the Week: How to build a preliminary monk 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. An odd email was sent to me by a reader expressing his concern over some of the new additions to the user interface coming with Mists of Pandaria and, more specifically, with the monk class. This got me thinking -- we need to start getting ready for the next expansion, and we need to do it now. Klaxons are sounding and alarm bells are ringing! Monks and pandas are coming! So how do we go about talking about designing a preliminary UI for the monk? First, we have to look at what is being added to the interface through the new class. Second, we have to use our current vocabulary to discuss what could potentially be applied to monk-specific UI elements.
