Slashdot Mirror
World of Warcraft UI Customization
geekboy_x writes "The gang at Blizzard has released a UI customization tool for World of Warcraft. It basically breaks the meta-interface into individual XML descriptions that you can change, add, or omit to your (corrupted decaying undead) heart's content. Note that you should have pretty good chops in both XML and Lua, and if you break it, you bought it." The best known UI project out there for WoW right now is Cosmos, which adds a few extra hotkey bars, a clock, a quest manager, and a nice buff/debuff timer.
Interesting note, Blizzard removed timing features from the language to prevent automated tasks. CosmoUI had one feature as a work around, but asked to remove it.
Stops that auto farming sitting in a field, like the fishing bots did. I wish I knew how the fishing bots worked, as you had to click a moving icon.
There are also 2 other UI Mods that are popular CTMod and Gypsy Mod
The XML language has made it easy for people to upload thier characters to websites like Allakhazam and Thottbot. Very nice gaming resources for WOW.
Reminds me of the days Tribes scripting took off, made many people into full time programers. Glad to see it in newer games, actually promoted by the game developers.
Good job Blizzard.
In previous Blizzard games, various hacks to give you access to information your client had to have but you weren't supposed to see were in fact cheating and bannable offenses. This notice on the main WOW page aside, Blizzard hasn't done much to inform users that this time they're ENCOURAGING people to mod their UI's, in part because they have failed to include highly important features in the one that ships with the game (every single class needs a second hotbar in their early teens). And, in all fairness, non-users do have a point - players with the mod installed can tell if they're just inside or just outside of spell range, faster access to a wider range of skills, better macro options, and numerous other things that DO give mod users advantages over non-mod users. Whether one should have to choose between installing a third party script on your machine or being at a disadvantage relative to other users is a separate debate from whether it's technically allowed by Blizzard.
:)
Also note that the language in the policy permitting UI's is very nebulous in terms of what those mods are allowed to do - basically Blizzard is trying to cover their tails in case they want to ban a specific thing later (see their occasional "requests" that Cosmos remove things from their UI, which would probably become a lot less polite if refused). That may cause serious problems down the line if people have installed mods that were legal at the time and don't get the message that they've since been banned.
Personally, I won't use Cosmos because of the massive bloat, labyrthine menus to even find out what it's doing, the possibility of taking a performance hit from all the extra things Cosmos attempts to do, and because there were some very shady incidents involving the programmers during the beta. But I certainly don't have a problem with other people using it, as I go on to use other mods.
AC There a fine line between "needless prosecuting" and "protecting their product". It's blindingly obvious to everybody but a few select OS people that bnet-d was trying to "steal" from blizzard. Blizzards authentication proccess should not be made public (as key gens would be made instantly) and Blizzard does not have any obligation to work with bnet-d to make bnet-d work legally. Bnet-d is trying to bypass a copy protection feature from blizzard. They plan to do this so you can play without paying. Blindingly obviously, so obvious that I have gone blind thinking about it.
So AC STFU.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."