Introduction

This morning, I woke up and checked the requisite Post your UI Thread on the Official Boards. Low and behold, someone (who shall remain nameless) linked a UI from WoWInterface, and gave it “props” for the “art”. Now, usually when I see something that is truly awful, I keep my opinions to myself. It’s easy to tell when someone has tried hard, but just can’t get it together – and I don’t like to make fun of hard workers! In any case, this UI is actually so bad that I can’t let it slide. I figured that since I’ve been having trouble finding good UI’s to highlight, I’ll highlight really awful UI’s. It’s more enjoyable for me to write, and presumably more enjoyable for you to read!

The Screenshot (link pops, as always)

The Tooltip:

This tooltip is the WORST tooltip I have ever seen. Let’s count the ways it blows. First: It’s huge. That tooltip is enormous, and RIGHT on the side of the screen. Let’s say you’re in AB, and a rogue is sneaking up on you! Well too bad, you can’t see it because of the GIANT FUCKING OPAQUE TOOLTIP! Why is this tooltip so large, you ask? Well, it’s full of totally irrelevant information! Like Guild Rank! Good thing you know that xXLegolazzXx is a Captain of the Guard in <Abortions of Stormwind>. Compliment the enormous size with an awful dark green background (which goes with nothing else in the UI) and an awful status bar texture, and you’ve got yourself one horrible tooltip. What the hell is up with class text on a tooltip! YOUR NAME TEXT IS COLORED TO INDICATE CLASS. >:|

Bar Textures

This UI has four, count them, FOUR different status bar textures. When I made the graphic, I actually failed to notice the DIFFERENT STATUS BAR TEXTURE ON THE TOOLTIP AND ORA. So,  you’ve got a high gloss texture on PitBull,  a cloud texture on oRA and CowTip, Banto on BigWigs, and Smooth v2 on Omen. Wow…they’re not even remotely tied together. I can understand people who have two high gloss textures in their UI, because there is at least a modicum of uniformity. But this…this…this is awful. Pick one, or at most two bar textures for your UI. Imagine, if you will, a room that is decorated in polka dots, stripes, plaid, and a floral pattern. It would be AWFUL.

How hard could it possibly be to select the same texture for each element! Maybe, MAYBE, I can buy differing textures if you have two things that look the same in the same area of your screen (like, for example, a bar-based cooldown mod and a dot timer…though that’s still really stupid). But in this case, it’s doesn’t even serve a differentiating purpose.

The “Art”:

The art is awful. It looks like someone took a pen and jammed it into the corners of your LCD. However, the brush used is really fresh! Black and gray creeping tendrils? That’s never been done before! I’m glad someone finally had the sense to incorporate ambiguously wispy DeviandArt shit into a UI! It’s so original, and I’m sure will become a fad overnight. Now, the designer obviously spent a lot of time picking the two colors that would go into this art. It really matches the game world, and shows off the creative sensibilities of the designer. Kudos!

Beyond how fucking awful if looks, the art is both intrusive and obnoxious. It does absolutely nothing to further the aesthetic value of the UI, and only furthers its lack of usability. The muddied border crap surrounding the chat frame and minimap look terrible. I’m glad whomever made this UI was able to find their smudge tool in Photoshop and use it to its fullest extent. It’s ugly, it’s unoriginal, it’s nonfunctional.

Pitbull

Let’s start off with the obvious: a grey health bar with a colored powerbar. That makes no fucking sense. Your eye is drawn to things that are brightly colored: flowers, balloons, the crotch of a man wearing a neon-green speedo. So, when you look at these unitframes, the first thing you look at is power. For a warrior, that’s worse than useless.

What the fuck is going on the with text over the target frame? It intersects with buffs, raid icons, and EVEN MORE IRRELEVANT LEVEL, CLASS AND RACE TEXT. WHAT THE HELL! All that information is useless when you find someone who’s name is longer than 7 characters. I mean come on…these are simple things that absolutely MUST be corrected before you even show your UI to your mom to post on the fridge.

Summation

I don’t know, man. It’s like this person sat down one day and thought to themselves: “Hey, how can I make the worst UI imaginable? Where’s my legal pad and pen, let’s start brainstorming!” The ONLY thing about this UI which is laudable is the placement of the unitframes. The worst part about it is, 175 people have downloaded it, and 2 people call it their “favorite.” I don’t care who you are, or how much you value your opinion: I can objectively say that you have absolutely atrocious taste if you would consider using this UI even for a second.

That said, download link.

Edit: I can’t believe I forgot to mention the buffs. There was just too much to work with here.