Yesterday I wrote about my experiences playing Wow. I though a lot about exactly why I wasn't having fun. This is my hypotheses and experiment.

 

I think there are two types of activities that you do in WoW:

• Mindlessly killing monster
• Planning what to do next

The UI in WoW is very good for the killing monsters part. There are lots of buttons and timers and things to do. Walking up to monsters and trying not to get an add is mindlessly interesting. However, the UI for planning is insufficient. I'll go as far as to say that WoW would be 5x higher on my entertainment scale if it had tools that helped me figure out where to go next. The current tool is the quest log which has many problems, but most are easy to fix.

Quests should never expired. Why do they do this? This only makes me lose the sense on completion. There is no reason to not allow me to do low level quests. I like easy things. Why not keep the experience full too? It's not like you can game the system and get extra experience.

The quest log shouldn't have a limit of twenty. Why can't I always put all the quest in the log? Well, currently because the quest log UI can't handle them.

The quest log needs a lot more UI. Grouping by designer-chosen area is not good. Not showing all the quests as once is not good. I'm not exactly sure how to make a better UI, but here are my requirements:

• It needs an Inbox so I can see want I'm working on.
• It needs some sort of folders. I like gmail's label system.
• I want to see all my completed quests to get a sense of accomplishment.
• I want to see on the map where to go next for all the quests. Searching is not fun.
• Each quest should probably have an icon associated with it.
• I want the know the rough time it will take to do quests, and it I can't solo them.
• I want a suggestion for a reasonable quests to do next.
• The UI should probably be full screen like the map.

Actually my quest log mostly does exist. It's called thottbot. It even tells me about quests I don't yet have. So last night I tried playing WoW with the improved quest log.

So I sat down and start playing WoW. First thing was to open my thottbot quest log and spend ten minutes determining my path for the evening. I found the four quests I wanted to complete and mapped a walking path. Now after playing WoW for ten minutes, I booted the game and logged in. Since I knew exactly where I was going, walking wasn't too bad. I accomplished my quest goals without putting to much thought into it during the action. I just turned off my mind and killed monster. That was fun.

So my experiment as a success. I like separating the mindless parts from the planning parts. That mental transition is difficult and it was nice to only do it once.