Notice that I suggest its the Mail wearing community, because Enhancement Shaman seem to share our confusion about all this haste.Among the many accomplishments of World of Warcraft, one of the unsung innovations with the greatest mpact was the ability for users (fluent in LUA scripting and XML) to customize the game's interface. The user community embraced this idea, creating thousands of interface mods for every use. Crafting? Gathering? Raiding? Healing? Maps? Whatever your play style, someone's figured out a better interface display to help. Many of these ideas eventually worked their way into the main game interface. Needless to say, Blizzard adamantly supports the online community, in part with an annual BlizzCon panel detailing the process of user interface design.Last year the topic was programming. But for this year's panel, entitled "The Ancient Secrets of WoW UI Design 2: Electric Boogaloo," the focus was on the art and design. A question and answer period followed the panel, allowing players and mod makers to pick designers' brains on what's in the works.Overall, Blizzard's design philosophy is based on three big ideas: one, gameplay first; two, wow gold games should take a minute to learn but a lifetime to master; and three, polish, polish, polish. That's true of the interfaces as well. UI team lead Tom Thompson outlined his team's goal: "Easy enough for your grandmother to use."With Thompson's help, senior interface designer Derek Sakamoto looked at a couple of case studies with the upcoming WoW expansion. First up?
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