[MUD-Dev] UI Design in MMOs

[Damion Schubert]

Derek Licciardi wrote:
> rjw wrote:

>> 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.

> Out of the box and to 99% of the players of the game, the
> statement is entirely true.  See my comment below.

Being one that plays with Cosmos, I would say that somewhere between
30%-40% of the people I group with randomly also use it (the UI ids
other cosmos users).

> As I stated above, 99% of the people that play will never know
> that the UI can be so much more.  I was in EB Games this afternoon
> and I picked up a copy of WoW for the hell of it.  I noticed on
> this box the following statement:

>   "A user interface that is so intuitive that you may not even
>   need the user manual."

> Sure you won't need the user manual.  You'll need a Lua scripting
> reference and an XML specification document to get the UI to do
> something that you would like it to do.  Again, my point is that
> the UI should come ALREADY capable of doing half the stuff the
> players are supposed to program it to do.

Customizable is NOT the same as intuitive.  In fact, what many
designers in the industry have noted is that customizable can be the
ENEMY of intuitive, since your UI now has so many more options than
it can handle.  Newbies get lost and frustrated when they, say,
close a window they shouldn't, or move a window off screen and can
only see part of it.  I find it very interesting that both CoH and
WoW chose to eschew customization in order to keep the interface
straight- forward, and I'm impressed that WoW both does that and
allows power users to customize your interface forward.  And no,
that doesn't mean learning LUA, it means downloading Cosmos or
another UI, at least one of which allows you to move windows around
freely.  If you gravitate towards power user, you will certainly
hear about the functionality in-game, as MMOs have a well-connected
audience.

> For the vast majority of the people, including myself, the UI will
> never be touched or re-scripted to do something other than what is
> stock and allowed through the in-game dialogs.  Sure you can
> program the hell out of the UI, but in the 10 hours it took for
> the UI to turn me off to the game, I would have never seen or had
> the chance to evolve the UI.  It's not my job as a customer to
> develop their UI anyway.  This whole thing intrigues me because
> the game has been touted as extremely newbie friendly and the UI
> is anything but.

Again, I feel you have different expectations because you work with
UI design on a personal level.  WoW has, by far, the best default
interface I've seen in an MMO to date.  It's fast, all of the
information you need is readily available, game mechanics are
clearly explained in the tooltips, most error messages are very
clear, and it looks gorgeous to boot.  WoW has gained MANY customers
from it's interface, who were scared off by the interfaces of more
complex games like UO, EQ or SB.  The only interface that's truly
bad in the game, that I've found, has been their buy/sell interface.

Now then, you may argue that this has more to do with all of the UIs
in MMOs before WoW were really awful.  I would not be able to argue
against that with great conviction.

--damion
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