The World of Warcraft (WoW) (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) provides users with extensive control over its user interface (UI), which has inspired the emergence of a large community devoted to developing UI modifications (UI modding). Through investigation of the members of the community of those who design and use UI modifications for WoW, we gather information that may aid in the creation of communities dedicated to modifying the interfaces of other software packages. The goal of this paper is to study the effect that user created interfaces have had on WoW and its community of users. To achieve this goal, we issued an online survey to WoW players that investigated four aspects of the community: (R1) the backgrounds of its members, (R2) their attitudes towards modifications and the community itself, (R3) their use of UI modifications, (R4) the characteristics and motivations of users who create and share modifications. The survey results represented numerous unique viewpoints and shed light on the varied nature of the UIM community of those who design and use WoW modifications. The results suggest that the interface of a videogame is best developed in concert with its players via UI modifications because the users of the system may be the best equipped to design or customize the interface to meet their needs. Since every user may have unique ideas about the perfect interface for a software package, perhaps the only way one could ever satisfy all users is to give them the ability to create their own.
@article{2012-12-TarVerHam,
Author = “Targett, Sean and Verlysdonk, Victoria and Hamilton, Howard J. and Hepting, Daryl H.”,
Title = “A Study of User Interface Modifications in World of Warcraft”,
Url = "https://www2.cs.uregina.ca/~hepting/research/works/2012-12-TarVerHam-A-Study-of-User-Interface-Modifications-in-World-of-Warcraft.html",
Journal = “Game Studies: the international journal of computer game research”,
Keywords = “World of Warcraft, massively multiplayer online game, statistical survey, user interface, human-computer interaction, user interface modification, user interface add-ons, modding, UI mods”,
Month = “December”,
Number = “2”,
Volume = “12”,
Year = “2012”,
}