The User Interface and You

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So, are you tired of the default, bland, WoW default user interface (UI)? I know I was. Although changing a good bit over time, I have come to the final version of my UI (at least I think so), it's simplistic, yet easy on the eyes; functional, and fantastic, I can go on.

It was late Burning Crusade when I became fascinated by people who were creating their own custom interfaces, so I decided to join the bandwagon. I enjoy customization in video games, having to use what everyone else uses is just boring, and get's old. I've learned much since the beginning, to the left is my first attempt at a custom interface, it may look "OK" but it is far from. Nothing is lined up correctly, and alot of the addons I was using at the time were memory hogging and utterly worthless. The only change that came to that UI was color really, I got to WotLK and figured I should make it white to reflect the recent expanion. You can click that image to see a better picture of it, but trust me, you aren't missing anything.

My second attempt proved to be quite fruitless, the interface was overly simple, and boring. However, it did for the first time give me an idea of how "minimalist" interfaces looked, and functioned. This UI evolved over time, although in tiny steps, I began to move on to what would become the UI I use today. Once again, feel free to look closer at my second attempt at the UI if you like, and once again, nothing here to see, except failure.

My next UI, I actually kept for a long time, and still would be most likely had I not had to delete my WTF folder, and start from scratch. I had just aquired my 32" 1900x1200 resolution monitor so I was going to make my interface wishes come true! This UI was very compact, and contained intersting animations, such as combat faders, which is an option of the Pitbull addon, an addon replacing the WoW player, and npc frames. This was my first time as well using no portraits, which can be even more simplistic, and can really make your UI boring, and confusing for someone not used to it, or used to how addons like pitbull work. However, this UI did end up causing trouble, such as a when I was playing a warrior or death knight, the combat faders would not work, they will appear if someone is not 100% full on mana, well, since death knights and warriors both start out with 0 energy, it would only fade then, thus causing the UI to lose it's unversal appeal. Along with many errors from pitbull combat fader, and other addons, the UI, althought beautiful, became stale. This interfae was eventually trashed for something a bit better.

Afer watching a few videos on Warcraft Movies, I gathered some interfaces I found, but decided to throw in my twists as I saw fit. This was the beginning of my latest, and last interface...

I had really enjoyed playing with the simple UI, my screen was virtually empty, and I had lots of viewing room, however, it was a bit lackluster, and I craved something more. So version 1 was made. I had moved my player, target, focus, and target's target close to the middle of the screen, enabling me to see what I need to see, without venturing to far one way or the other. The largest difference howerver is not in closeness of bars, or layout of the action bars, but the art on the top and bottom. I had seen a UI using this and fell in love with the artsy design, and the sleekness it gave my big screen monitor. However, in this verison of the UI, all health bars are dark red, which is the Death Knight color, and the energy bars were grey, which ended up causing more trouble than solving. Class health bars would be added, and energy bars would go back to original colors based on what they were. On to version 2.

The only real changes to this part were the enlargement of the character bars, the class specific coloring of the health bars, the mod Power Auras (the buff icons to the left),and the addition of the 3D character models from ZMOB DB. Not much to see here, just a little changes here and there.

Finally we arrive at the end of my interface's evolution. Version 3 is what I feel the most comfortable with, and will keep until either Blizzard bans it or I deem it necessary to add extra things to it. Hope you enjoyed the read, and the video that is on the bottom (Picture is a placeholder, coming shortly, uploading problems ><)