Every now and then, in design circles, you come across someone who sees the modifiability of WoW’s UI to be the Robot Jesus of game design. Players can finally customize their own UIs! Instead of fearing players, Blizzard embraces them! Somewhere in here, it comes across that, indeed, information does in fact want to be free, yo.
Now, I love the power and flexibility that this provides to the players. What’s more, I’m gratified that the Blizzard team is smart enough to incorporate some of the most popular of those mod changes into the real game. A commitment to doing so is what turns the feature from a niche feature for hardcore users (which incidentally drives the live team nuts to support) into one that benefits all players – eventually. When that happens, its a real validation for the model. But it’s still not what WoW did right.
First off, WoW’s model of opening up the hood is not terribly unique. Indeed, many other games, including Everquest, Shadowbane, and UO all allowed users to modify and customize the UI before WoW did. None have enjoyed the success that WoW’s has had in comparison, though. The reason for the success of any mod community often depends on whether or not a frustrated amateur UI designer chooses to turn your game into his hobby. WoW has a large enough community that the odds that someone would produce CosmosUI was pretty much inevitable.
All the same, if you want to trace WoW’s success in the UI arena to something, you would have to trace it to the opposite – WoW’s newbie UI is, compared to other MMOs, incredibly inflexible. You can’t have more than two windows up at once. You can’t set font colors, or easily choose a new skin. You can’t even move windows around. For most players, that’s okay, because the inflexible UI is also extremely clean, focused, well-polished, and intuitive.
For those seeking something that WoW did that was revolutionary, this is it. In many ways, it’s the same addition-by-subtraction revolution in design thought that allowed the iPod to turn the MP3 player from a geek toy to something the mass market gladly embraced. Players in WoW are not overwhelmed by too many options, they can always find the command they need to perform, and it’s almost impossible for them to screw up their interface by, say, deleting their inventory window and being unable to re-open it. This stands in stark contrast to the GUIs of many MMOs, most of which seem to be designed more like chinese puzzle boxes than doorways to fun.
Blizzard’s philosophy around the UI modding community is to draw a harsh line between customizable UI and the default, to minimize the odds that a casual user will somehow customize his own UI to be unusable. By the time you figure out how to modify your UI by installing something like CosmosUI (or coding your own), you’re pretty well invested in the game. The shiny, polished UI is now a hindrance, but you’ve got enough of an understanding of how the game works to know how things are supposed to work, and whether or not a UI mod is helping or hindering you. All the same, I suspect the vast majority of WoW players never even consider installing a UI mod.
Anyway, we still have a ways to go before allowing players to own the UI problem is a reality. Patch day is still an enormous hassle for anyone who uses these mods, especially on mods that are no longer supported by the players. They also create a lot of CS and QA traffic for Blizzard. Is it worth it? Yes, because the community is continually pushing the UI towards where it SHOULD be, by a fairly democratic process.
But let’s not confuse that with the real genius. The genius is the simple UI, not the infinitely modifiable one.
Recent Comments