The Daily Grind: Who's got the best UI?

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The Daily Grind: Who's got the best UI?

by Akela Talamasca Apr 10th 2008 at 8:00AM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, At a glance, Game mechanics, MMO industry, Opinion, Second Life, Star Trek Online, The Daily Grind, Virtual worlds

There's something to be said for a good user interface. Look at the ugly UI of Second Life, for example. Compare that to World of Warcraft, or what would have been (and might still be) Star Trek Online. Looks are important; at the very least, the interface should match the aesthetic of the world in which you're playing. But beyond that, there are other considerations.

Obviously, you want to be able to quickly find the commands you're looking for, and perhaps even customize the UI to match how you think. Assignable keyboard commands are a time- and sometimes life-saver. And although its growing increasingly rare these days, sometimes monitor size and screen resolution are important too. So, when they're all stacked up against each other, who's got the best UI?

Tags: keyboard-commands, second-life, star-trek-online, tdg, the-daily-grind, user-interface, world-of-warcraft

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

4-10-2008 @ 10:28AM

Ghen said...

WoW's customization has led to the best UI in creation. Mine. Because its tailored to exactly what I want to see.

Allowing 3rd parties to completely control the UI in the form of addons is a must for any future developer. Anything less and I'll just be disappointed. Its been done in the past sure, but not with this popularity.

4-10-2008 @ 10:52AM

BigCountry said...

Shadowbane.

Yeah it was ugly but why was/is it the best?

Because it was FULLY customizable. You could do anything with that thing..
:D

4-10-2008 @ 11:35AM

Angel said...

How about UIs that are not customizable in the way EQ2 and WoW are?

CoX comes to mind form me in that regard. Yes, you can move it's aspects around but the basic expression of the UI features are all well designed as independent portions and work in harmony as a whole.

4-10-2008 @ 11:45AM

sirhc DeSantis said...

SL interface is fine. I don't spend my time inworld grinding away killing mice so it works well. Comparing it to stuff like WoW is pointless

4-10-2008 @ 12:28PM

Cincia Singh said...

I have to agree with sirhc about this comparison being pointless ... grinding on about "I hate this" or "they don't listen to my opinion on this" are totally useless exercises. Now, go game.

4-10-2008 @ 1:41PM

Nacon said...

Give me a moment! I've been trying to make my own theme on and off for a few while.... but getting there! And yes, I hate bright UI, so I'm sticking to the dark theme but more sleek design, but I'm still limited to do what I can with the current XML layout... Did I mention that they suck at XML? :(

4-10-2008 @ 2:03PM

Sin Trenton said...

I'm afraid I think the comparison is limping, to say the least, comparing apples and oranges.

WoW is a computer game with the majority of the software running clientside, whereas SL is a virtual world, with the majority of the software running serverside.
Or did they suddenly slim WoW down to 36MB?

Of course it would be nice to have a customable UI in SL (Don't know about the others, since I don't play computer games), but doesn't the client/server side fact has some effect on the UI?

4-11-2008 @ 3:58PM

Loki said...

How about a massivley competition to see what the users might come up with for an SL UI?

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