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Reader UI of the Week is back! Each week WoW.com will bring you a fresh look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send your screenshots, along with info on what mods you’re using, to readerui@gmail.com.

This interface, by Metzerott, is one of the more unusual I’ve seen. With 90% of the submissions I get featuring rectangular unit frames towards the bottom, a large bottom panel studded with action buttons, and a customized mini-map moved to the middle of the bottom, it’s nice to see something a little different. Well, it still hits the last point, but two out of three ain’t bad.

More importantly to me, it’s very minimal. It covers less of the screen than any interface I’ve seen recently, including the default UI. I’m going to guess that the left unit frame is the player, the right is the target, and the small user frame to the upper-left of the target frame is target-of-target.

Up at the top-right you can see some ElkBuffBars, and there’s a soulstone timer at the right under the zone map. The minimap has been Sexy-fied a little bit, and below that you can see the zone name, the framerate, the current coordinates, and a percentage that I’m going to guess is durability.

Finally, off to the left is Recount, done up to be mostly transparent. Based on the addon list, a lot more stuff (scrolling combat text, Omen, etc.) will pop up when it’s needed.

Here’s what Metzerott had to say about it:

My UI is designed around the concept of “Just in time information.” I tried to make as many addons as possible only appear to give me information when they have information to present. When the addon is not presenting information it goes away or goes as transparent as possible. Some addons, such as SexyMap, look cool and get to stay at a more visible alpha. This is a very beautiful game. Many people have spent many years building it, I don’t like things obstructing my view of it. This UI is made for 1680×1050 resolution.

Just-in-time, indeed. I may draw some features from this for my own UI, in fact. The circular unit frames are not for me, I’m not a fan of the font he’s using, and I like to see bars as well as numbers for health/mana, but everyone has their own preferences. I do like how there are no action bars showing; at a guess, this player has most of his core keybindings memorized, and the rest are on oPie menus.

List of mods used:

Ara_Broker_XP: ASCII experience display LibDataBroker plugin
picoEXP: Another LDB XP plugin
Fortress: Displays LDB plugin data
MakeRocketGoNow: LDB quick launcher (to be honest, I don’t really understand what this one does)
picoFPS: LDB framerate display
StatBlock_Coords: LDB coordinate display
tekKompare: Always-on equipment comparison tooltips, and hover tooltips on linked items
tekJunkSeller: Automatically vendors grey items
tekErr: Lua error manager
tekDebug: Addon debugging utility
tekability: Durability on the paperdoll screen and as an LDB plugin
oUF: Unit frame framework
oUF_Metzerott: Circular unit frames for oUF, made custom for this UI.
oUF_CombatFeedback: Adds combat feedback to oUF frames (text for events like “dodge” or taking damage)
oUF_Banzai: Aggro coloring for oUF frames
OPie: Radial action menus
OmniCC: Cooldown counts on everything
FluidFrames: Move any frame
MikScrollingBattleText: Scrolling combat text
Bartender4: Action bars
ElkBuffBars: Bars for buffs and debuffs
Omen: Threat meter
Recount: Damage meter
_Cursor: Customizable cursor trails
ArkInventory: Flexible inventory display
GoGoMount: One-key mounting
Cellular: Instant-messenger style whisper chat mod
Forte: I have no idea what this mod is
PowerAuras: Customizable indicators for just about anything
SexyMap: “Minimap awesomification”
Blipstick: Reskins minimap blips (“!”, “?”, etc.)
ButtonFacade: Support for skinning action buttons
ButtonFacade_Metz: Custom button skins
DKIRunes: Rune and disease display for Death Knights
SellOMatic: Automatically vendor whatever items you want, not just grey ones
Postal: Enhanced mailbox support
Portfolio: Library for addon options
Deadly Boss Mods: Need-to-know information about bosses
Butsu: Slick loot frame
Prat 3.0: Chat enhancements

If you like it, you can download it from WoWInterface. And if you don’t like it, and think you can do better, I invite you to submit your own UI to readerui@gmail.com.

Maintenance, you say? Unheard of! After all, what is wrong with a Paladin standing upright while riding her horse? Or what’s wrong with constant errors telling intrepid adventurers additional instances cannot be launched?

Well, okay. Something might be wrong with those things. Hopefully tomorrow’s maintenance will bring fixes to them. But more importantly based on all account it’ll be bringing patch 3.1.3 with it as well.

Maintenance will last from 3:00 a.m. PDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT. Unless, of course, you on one of the few dozen realms listed after the break. For those special realms, maintenance will last from 12:01 a.m. PDT until 12:01 p.m. PDT. Why is it starting at the :01? Because Blizzard wants you to have an extra minute to complete raids tonight. That’s how much they care. And you know what? So do I… (Click it… I dare you.)

The full list of realms under the extended maintenance after the break.

• Aegwynn
• Akama
• Aman’Thul
• Azjol-Nerub
• Barthilas
• Blackrock
• Bloodscalp
• Bonechewer
• Boulderfist
• Bronzebeard
• Caelestrasz
• Chromaggus
• Crushridge
• Daggerspine
• Darkspear
• Dath’Remar
• Draenor
• Dragonblight
• Dragonmaw
• Draka
• Drak’thul
• Dreadmaul
• Dunemaul
• Eitrigg
• Eldre’Thalas
• Feathermoon
• FIretree
• Frostmane
• Frostmourne
• Frostwolf
• Garithos
• Gundrak
• Gurubashi
• Hakkar
• Jubei’Thos
• Khaz Modan
• Khaz’goroth
• Kil’jaeden
• Kilrogg
• Korgath
• Kul Tiras
• Malorne
• Mug’thol
• Muradin
• Nagrand
• Nathrezim
• Ner’hzul
• Perenolde
• Proudmoore
• Rexxar
• Runetotem
• Saurfang
• Scarlet Crusade
• Sen’jin
• Shadow Council
• Shadowsong
• Silver Hand
• Silvermoon
• Skywall
• Smolderthorn
• Spirestone
• Stonemaul
• Stormscale
• Surarmar
• Terenas
• Thorium Brotherhood
• Tichondrius
• Uldum
• Vek’nilash
• Windrunner

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers’ Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

One of the big annoyances of raiding is finding the right schedule. This time of year is particularly bad for many guilds, as last week’s Officers’ Quarters column proved. Students of all ages have finals. Working adults are traveling more often or spending more time away from the PC. When you have a small crew, the loss of even one person for a few weeks can mean all your raids are put on hold. This week, one officer wants to know how to figure out a raiding schedule despite some uncooperative individuals.

You said it yourself, HAH: “Raiding is a team effort.” Rather than having individuals pose self-serving solutions, you need to figure out the schedule with input from everyone.

Allow me to suggest a statistical solution. Ask everyone who wants to raid to post on your Web site. Have them rank each day of the week from 1-10 in terms of their availability. 10 would be a day they can always make barring a personal emergency. 9 would be a day they can almost always make, and so on. 1 would be a day they could never make no matter what.

Set a deadline for this post so you don’t waste a whole week gathering the data. You want to get your raiding back on track ASAP. Set your request to be the message of the day. Talk to people about it when you see them online. Make sure they know how important it is. It’s in their best interest, after all. If they aren’t accounted for, the result will be far less favorable to their personal schedule.

Once everyone has posted, it’s a matter of some simple math. First, eliminate all the days that were rated with a 1, 2, 3, or 4 by anyone. You’ll consider those last, and only if necessary. Hopefully there won’t be more than a couple of days that people rated so low. If various people rated all 7 days of the week that low, then you’ll have to eliminate only the days that were rated 1 or 2.

Next, take the total rating for each day and divide it by the number of respondents. For example, say the ratings from 10 raiders for Monday were 10, 10, 10, 10, 9, 8, 8, 7, 5, 5. The total is 82. Divided by 10 people, that’s a rating of 8.2.

Say you threw out Friday and Sunday, and the remaining days were

• Monday, 8.2
• Tuesday, 9.5
• Wednesday, 6.1
• Thursday, 5.8
• Saturday, 9.1

Tuesday and Saturday are now your raid days, with Monday as the alternative day if a reschedule is necessary. Statistically speaking, they are the best days for everyone in the group. You eliminated days that were impossible (or nearly so) for any individual to make. In theory everyone should be able to go on that day during most weeks if they “want to.”

If they don’t want to, that’s another story. What else can you do at that point but recruit someone to replace them? Just because you’re all good friends doesn’t give any one person the right to veto a raid night based on nothing but laziness or selfishness — in fact, I’d say they have even less right to do so.

Some will of course try to argue for other days. Point to the numbers and say there’s nothing you can do about it. You have to raid on the days that are the best for the most.

By using a statistical method, you’re removing the subjectivity from scheduling. No one’s needs are more (or less) favored than anyone else. It’s not an ideal solution. (The ideal solution would be to get everyone to agree to a schedule and show up without having to go to this length.) But it’s a solution that works when people are being uncooperative.

Some people’s schedules will change once school is over or some other life event occurs. You can always go back and reevaluate the ratings for each day if someone has to change a day to a 1-4 rating. However, keep the original numbers and ask people to provide a reason for a change when they make a drastic one. Otherwise, you may not have stability.

It’s important to choose days and then stick to them. When family and friends know in advance that the guild raids on certain days, they can do their part to leave those days free of other commitments when possible.

I know some people will scoff at the idea of a wife or husband planning their life around their spouse’s guild’s raiding schedule. But it’s no different than asking them to plan around a weekly poker night or softball game. It won’t always be possible for them to leave those days free. Family obviously has to come first. But families can try to accommodate someone’s needs when it’s something they enjoy doing. (If a parent is raiding five nights a week instead of spending time with the family, that’s a whole other story.)

So that’s my suggestion, Has a Headache. I’m curious how other guilds figure out their raiding schedules. Tell us about it below!

/salute

As with other MMORPGs, companies have emerged offering to sell virtual gold and associated services. After Blizzard started offering free trial game-play accounts, players noticed an increase in spam from bots advertising these services.^[88] One study shows that this problem is particularly prevalent on the European realms, with gold being over 14 times more expensive to buy on US realms than their European counterparts.^[89]

In patch 2.1, Blizzard responded to this by adding additional anti-spam mechanics including whisper throttling and the report spam function. Additionally, trial accounts are prevented from speaking in the public chat channels (although they may speak to players within range or whisper to other players that have first whispered them), participating in-game trades, using the Auction House and the mail feature and several other limitations.

In May 2007 Blizzard filed a complaint against In Game Dollar LLC (trading as peons4hire) in US federal court. In February 2008, the parties filed a consent decree in which In Game Dollar agreed to refrain from using any World of Warcraft chat or communication to advertise any business or sell any services relating to World of Warcraft.^[90]

As characters progress in World of Warcraft and take on some of the toughest challenges, many of the rewards received are bound to that character and cannot be traded, generating a market for the trading of accounts with well-equipped characters. The highest noted World of Warcraft account trade was for £5000 (€7000, $9,900 USD) in early September 2007.^[91]

The practice of buying or selling gold in World of Warcraft is seen as highly controversial.^[92] On February 21, 2008, Blizzard released a statement concerning the consequences of buying gold. Blizzard reported that an “alarmingly high” proportion of all gold bought originates from “hacked” accounts. The article also stated that customers who had paid for character leveling services had found their accounts compromised months later, with all items stripped and sold for virtual gold. The article noted that leveling service companies often used “disruptive hacks … which can cause realm performance and stability issues”.^[93]

Game “addiction”

World of Warcraft has also been the subject of video game addiction concerns.

In August 2005, the government of the People’s Republic of China introduced an online gaming restriction limiting playing time to 3 hours, after which the player would be expelled from whichever game they were playing. Of the more than 20 million people who play online games in China, roughly 1.5 million play World of Warcraft.^[94] In 2006, it changed the rule so only citizens under the age of 18 would face the limitations.^[95]

Community

In addition to playing the game itself and conversing on discussion forums provided by Blizzard, World of Warcraft players often participate in the virtual community in creative ways, including fan artwork^[96] and comic strip style storytelling.^[97]

Blizzard garnered criticism for its decision in January 2006 to ban guilds from advertising sexual orientation preferences. The incident occurred after several players were cited for “harassment” after advocating a group for gay-straight alliance.^[98][99] Blizzard later reversed the decision to issue warnings to players promoting LGBT-friendly guilds.