UI-Changes

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has brought with it a lot of changes to the UI of the game. It seems like convenience has become a goal for Blizzard as the UI has clearly been designed to be both more convenient to the user but also to improve gameplay. Let's take a look!

Picture is unrelated, I just thought it was cool.

Quest Auto-completion

A lot of people have been QQ-ing over this feature, claiming that it makes the game "too easy". My experiences with the auto-completion feature have been good so far. Mostly it is quests obtained from dropped items (such as maps and amulets found on mobs) that end this way. This kind of makes sense since the quest-giver is an item in your back. You just click to the right "Click here to complete quest" and you complete it! It gives the impression that your character can often think for themselves as to what would be the objective in their quest instead of just being told all the time. It wasn't really that much of a bother before but it sure is handy!

New character-tab
The character-tab has received a major overhaul in Cataclysm. It has been split into two windows, one with your gear and your character in it and the other with your stats and the like. The stats-window can be closed to allow a smaller-sized character-window. Previously, the character window had tabs with things such as "defense" and "ranged" but they no longer exist. You can see all your stats in one window by scrolling down. A major improvement and a welcome one.

New level-up UI
I mentioned convenience earlier and this change is the definition of convenience. Whenever your character levels up, a box will appear in the middle of your screen saying that you have reached whatever level you have reached. It will then proceed and list when new spells you can learn at this level as well as features you may have unlocked (such as Dungeon Finder, Battlegrounds and Talents). It is really great to know and it is a great display of the changes that you go through with each level. Again, a welcome addition and one thing that I will grow to love in the future.

New spell-book UI
Again, convinience is the name of the game. The spell-book has greatly improved and displays your armor-skills, your weapon-skills as well as your guild-perks and racials. The basic layout is the same but it looks much cleaner with the removal of spell-ranks. A new feature is that you can see all spells from level 1-85 listed in the spellbook and you can thereby see whenever you will be able to learn a specific spell. This is great for planning your levelling experience and it helps solve those situations where you are like: "Hmmm.. What level did I learn bear form, again?". It has been a common complaint that you had to go to your trainer to see if you could learn anything new. This has been fixed now.

It also has a tab for professions now, which is pretty cool. It lists your primary- and secondary professions in a nice and simple way.

New talent-tree UI
All three talent-trees can now be seen at once, making it easier to specc your character into different trees. In the top, the mastery bonuses are displayed and if you hold your cursor over them you can see what bonuses they give and at what rate you are gaining this mastery bonus. While it is not necessarily a big change it does give a better look at what your character is capable of learning.

New Trainer-UI

The trainer UI has also been simplified. It shows more more than it did before but its appearance has become more sleak and more simple to look at. It shows you at what level you can learn various spells as well as the price of these. As far as I have seen spells are not sorted according to their school, but you can filter through the spells avaiable. I may be wrong on this.