[MUD-Dev] UI Design in MMOs

[rjw]

Derek Licciardi wrote:

> In WoW, it seems like they went after their Diablo II crowd with
> an interface derived straight from that game.  Nothing is movable,
> resizable or customizable.

This statement is actually not true. The UI is fully customizable,
just not within the game itself. There already exist UI mods and
have since beta that allow all sorts of
customization. http://www.cosmosui.com/ is one of these.

> In an MMO where my play style is different from yours, you should
> be able to get comfortable. (group vs. solo, pet vs. no pet,
> crafting.)  Instead, you are forced to play the game the way the
> developers think is best.  Even the dynamic windows are not
> movable which will be nothing but frustration for crafters that
> need multiple bags open and other dialogs.

Well, only if you feel like you can't go out and get more
information and change the UI to suit you:

  "The interface of World of Warcraft is built from XML files which
  describe the look and layout, and lua files which contain
  scripting functionality. This document is a short introduction
  into modifying these files to customize your
  interface. Customizing the interface is a very technical endeavor,
  and you should not attempt it unless you have a good working
  knowledge of XML and Lua."

  http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-interface-customization&t=2619&p=1&tmp=1#post2619

For instance, I've seen mods that allow you to rename bags with
something other than 'Red Woolen Bag' to arbitrary text.

> The biggest issue in WoW reminds me of the first EQ interface,
> lack of consistency.  Let's see, right click is the primary
> activity on an object.  Uh NO.  Everyone from Mac to Linux to
> Windows has been trained that left click or left double click is
> the primary action and right click brings up a context sensitive
> menu. (EQ2 and SWG seem to have figured this out for the most
> part) Why abandon that idea?  It makes zero sense at this point in
> the software industry.

Come at it from the Warcraft angle and it makes more sense, I
think. Not only is WoW trying to be a great MMO, it's trying to
remain consistent with the Warcraft series, both in terms of story
and interface. Gameplay almost feels like you're in a cinematic
Warcraft III, and I love that.

> Scrollbars for windows are placed on the left hand side of the
> window.  Wrong again.  Every scrollbar you see in the big three
> OSes are right side scroll bars.  Again why abandon this
> familiarity.  There's more.  The skill information dialog has icon
> based tabs on the top right hand corner of the window while the
> character information dialog has worded tabs along the bottom edge
> of the window.  The item information dialog comes up in a fixed
> location on the right hand bottom corner of the screen and your
> inventory is on the left hand bottom corner but for some strange
> reason they figured out hovering stat windows for various other
> dialogs in the game.  I simply do not get it and one would think
> that major development houses would have a clue about this sort of
> stuff.

I agree with some of your rant above...but the fact remains that
myself and the people I play with, and the people I've spoken with
who play WoW think it is the most intuitive and easy-to-pickup MMO
yet. Not a scientific, true, but telling.

I should also point out that just because the "big three" (there are
three? :) do it, doesn't mean it's good UI. Don't even get me
started on all the things wrong with Windows from a UI
perspective. :)

> Enough of the rant; I've made my point.  Let's hope that the next
> generation of games doesn't botch the UI as badly as WoW did.

We have to agree to disagree here. They released a simple, generic
UI that is none to complex so as to confuse new users. They built an
incredibly rich interface to almost all game functions and made it
available through Lua scripting, allowing modders to completely
customize every aspect of the interface. They let me play exactly
the way I want to play, with a CoH-like alt tray, movable windows,
etc. And that's just some program I got of the 'net. If I want, I
can go edit some XML and customize these mods even further.

I'll concede that interface modding via XML files may be too complex
for the average user. In fact, there are at least 3 UI customization
IDEs in development for WoW by third parties:

  - http://blua.sourceforge.net/
  - http://www.ideais.com.br/luaeclipse/
  - http://editplus.com/

Why spend dev cycles developing interfaces and/or UI components that
you don't know are going to get used? Build a community that can
fill in the wholes after release.

My $.02,
rjw

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