Trying to play without addons

[zorino]

For those who started playing 20 years ago, that interface was the norm.

Player and target frames in the top left, buffs and debuffs in the top right and to see the debuffs applied to the target, sometimes a magnifying glass was needed as the icons were small.

I don't know how it is possible that an interface organized in that way was good for the developers.

And in the end it took them 20 years to understand that it had to be totally reorganized.

Have you ever tried to go back to playing with the 2004 game interface, without the use of addons?

[Shred]

People used to play with addons during vanilla. Maybe not as many people but they already were widely available.

Also, you did not need a magnifying glass since all interface elements used to be much bigger - you have to disable the "UI Scale" setting in video settings to see what it was like.

[zorino]

I've always kept the ui scale disabled and yet the debuffs icons on the target look small when compared to how they can become with an addon.

[Shred]

But do you play at 800x600?

[zorino]

Resolution at 1920x1080.

[Shred]

Nobody had 1080p monitors, let alone 16:9 monitors in 2005.

In fact until patch 3.3 blizzard didn't even add widescreen loading screens to the game, that's how rare those monitors were.

Play with no UI scale and fullscreen 800x600 resolution and see how it really was.

[pigusula]

Yes, a significant number of people were still using 800x600 displays 2004, roughly just under 40% according to a graph in this short article: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/com...etting-bigger/

[Skoobydoo]

I don't know how it is possible that an interface organized in that way was good for the developers.

And in the end it took them 20 years to understand that it had to be totally reorganized.

The reason why devs never cared for WoW UI is because people use addons since Vannila, so there was never reason to improve the UI.

The reason why in DF they decided to improve the UI is because in Shadowlands majority of people went to play other MMORPG games and they realize how much better is to be able to log in and play without the need to install custom UI for the game to be playable. Ever since Shadowlands the community start asking Blizzard to improve the UI and reduce addons usage. There have been tons of complains about weakauras and boss modes as well and Blizzard is trying to reduce the dependence of boss modes by adding private auras.

[fdbsfhe4rfar]

If i recall correctly, my first PC build had 1600x1200x32 resolution. windows 2000 professional. wtf are you talking about. also Vanilla wow client is readily available without any addons. wtf you guys are talking about.

[Shred]

Congratulations on having that resolution, but understand that it was very rare. Check pigusula's link, and assuming you're referring to around the year 2000 (since XP was released in 2001), you'll see that you were in the 2% of users.

[Shiyoshi1]

I only use dps counter, that is it.

[IcarNS]

Vanilla UI works for anything but raiding or group healing.