WoW to store UI settings server-side post-Lich King

by Michael Zenke Sep 1st 2008 at 1:00PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Betas, Fantasy, Expansions

Recent discussions in the official World of Warcraft UI forums might be of interest to folks that like to tweak their user interface. Which, we think, is pretty well everyone. There's a lengthy post from 'blue' poster Iriel there all about changes to the UI elements coming in Wrath of the Lich King. Tech-savvy UI tweakers will find a lot to love there, with new unit functions and plenty of tweaks to how old ones worked, Even better, it sounds like a ton of our user-created information will be stored on the Blizzard servers, from Macros key bindings to UI settings.

It's all 'Beta' information until the expansion launches, of course, so some of these listed items may change between now and the game's release date. Head on over to the official forums to check out the full details, and be sure to stop by WoW Insider for more on the game's changing UI.

One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!

Tags: blizzard, mods, settings, ui, user-interface, world-of-warcraft, wow, wrath-of-the-lich-king

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Animagnum said on 1:27PM 9-01-2008

This will be a nice tweak to the game. LotRO does this and it is very helpful for those of us who are OCD about interface positions.

recursive said on 1:36PM 9-01-2008

I like it.

I wonder how communication addons will be handled, some gains to be made there as well if they're server-synchronized (scheduling, banking, etc), though I imagine this would create too much overhead and Blizzard is incorporating their own solutions anyway, which don't have to rely on custom channels. The settings of which, though not strictly ui, would be great to see server-side as well.

As is, the re-setting up of addons is the major pain of a reset or reinstall for me, so hurray for server-side settings!

csavarda said on 12:27PM 9-02-2008

I don't think they're going as far as to backup your SavedVariables folder (addon setttings) or actual addons for you.

From the sounds of it, they are only saving the configuration for things that are built-into their client, "Macros, keybindings and UI settings." (Notice they said "UI settings" and not "custom UI settings." Big difference.) All those things could be saved into a simple text document of a fixed size, so it wouldn't be too difficult for them to keep 1 small file on their servers for every active account. I'd be really surprised if they took it upon themselves to backup all our custom, player-made addons, though.

So, you can log on from anywhere and the account will remember whether or not you had your cloak and hood hidden or not. It will remember how far you have your camera zoomed out, and it will know whether you had player nameplates turned on or player titles enabled. However, you won't have your Omen and Pitbull frames OR the configurations for those extra custom addons unless you backup the SavedVariable files yourself and transfer them to the new computer, as it's always been.

Chainsore said on 3:54PM 9-01-2008

Without a WTF folder what are we supposed to delete when a boss bugs out or a quest won't complete?

LiQiuD said on 9:10AM 9-02-2008

This is good if you are a regular user...this is bad for people that like to tweak. I keep 5 different copies of WoW on my computer at home, so I can test things as I develop them....now I won't be able to do that. :(