World of Warcraft: Dragonflight HUD and UI Revamp Bluepost

Dragonflight Posted 2022/09/01 at 2:10 PM by Archimtiros

Get ready for a fresh-looking Heads-Up Display (HUD), and User Interface (UI) revamp designed to be adjustable, effective, attractive, and easily accessible.

With the Dragonflight update, we’re making sweeping changes to World of Warcraft’s HUD and UI from the ground up. Our aim is to provide a clutter-free layout and allow players to customize their HUD to better fit their individual needs.

A Whole New Look
Technology has advanced since we first developed the UI in 2004. We now have more tools at our fingertips to create and improve quality-of-life features. We wanted to modernize the appearance of the player’s layout and view while maintaining the original design’s charm and personality. And there is no better time to deliver these changes than with the release of Dragonflight.

Right away, players will immediately notice the more apparent changes. For instance, the minimap and health bar are more prominent, and we’ve removed some clutter to provide greater viewable space. Also, while keeping to the iconic design, we’ve cleaned up the appearance of the Action Bar. We also added a fresh set of Gryphons and created Wyverns for our Horde-loving heroes. There’s also a new look for the loot and inventory display, and players can use Combined Backpack functionality to help them find and organize their inventory items more quickly.

Separated and Combined Bags

Make It Your Own
Welcome to Edit mode. With Edit mode, you will now have the ability to tweak, personalize, and move (almost) anything anywhere to your heart’s desire. Not only are various elements of the HUD movable, but each individual component has a variety of options to help you get everything just right.

Once you set everything set how you like it, you’ll be able to name, save, edit, copy, and share it with the community. And, for those that change specs often, the feature is designed to remember which specialization you’re in. As you switch between specs, the feature will remember the HUD layout you have for that spec and change accordingly.

Will this new feature replace the ability to use third-party add-ons entirely? Not at all. We recognize that add-ons provide many opportunities for players to customize their experience, but not all players utilize them. However, with the help of our user research team, we are working to meet our community’s needs. We include elements that some add-ons provide to the base UI. Those who wish to can continue using the add-ons they like.

Improved Accessibility to Make Things Easier
Improving accessibility features for our players is at the forefront of much of the design of the new UI and providing ways for players to have a better experience is vital. Here are some of the changes that we’ve been working on to help improve accessibility for players:

New Option: Press and Hold Casting – When enabled, the player can press and hold a keyboard hotkey to continually cast a spell on an Action Bar without repeatedly pressing the button.
New Feature: Interact Key – Pressing the Interact Key will enable you to interact with NPCs and objects with a key press instead of a mouse click. Interactive NPCs and objects will gain an icon above their heads as you move close enough to interact.
New Targeting System: Action Combat – This feature works alongside the standard targeting features and automatically targets enemies as you approach them. This will allow you to start casting abilities immediately and dynamically switch between targets based on where you’re looking.

Looking Ahead
Refining the UI is an ongoing project; we want to continue to make changes and improvements. In addition to polishing the current set of available features, we intend to tackle many other UI elements and include more features further down the line, like:

Additional Edit Mode options
Group Manager
Raid Frames
Quest Tracker
And more updates to the art
We’ll have more information and details on these and other features as we move toward the launch of Dragonflight. We look forward to getting your feedback as you experience all these changes and more.

World of Warcraft®: Dragonflight™ will be available on or before December 31, 2022. Visit the Dragonflight site to pre-order. Check WorldofWarcraft.com/news for updates, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

See you in the Dragon Isles!

Dragonflight Beta

Vengeance Talent Calculator

Features

Class Changes

Updates

Comment by Sp33deythe new UI customization is that good, that I will at least test it out when it comes out, maybe I won't rely on ElvUI like the last few expansions anymoreComment by davemacawesomeI think I'm gonna go for a bit of a mix of Old and New in mineComment by bwdoddI wonder if they plan on updating the player and target health bars to the larger ones like in the screenshots of the new UI? I prefer the larger health design.Comment by SaltLBNice! It's finally time to end reliance on addons for simple QOL features like rearranging on-screen components and creating one bag. For me, using those addons always increased my latency/lag time so I'm looking forward to finally doing away with them.Comment by TheLazarusHeartBagnon, MoveAnything, Kaliel's Tracker, maybe Bartender, possibly unit frame addons...this is (hopefully) going to clean up a huge amount of addon clutter.

Nothing against the addon creators, but less 'required' addons for a game to be fun is always a good thing.Comment by Mipsenstill have not found where to change the 3d portrait like that picture with the evoker, guess it was just early dev work that was scrapped?Comment by voreoIt be handy if they could build in bagnons search / ability to see currencies across all characters. But hopefully some of these features becoming baseline allows for some addons to cut out some bloat.Comment by WhomiduVery cool that Blizz is taking notes from some of the best and most popular add-ons out there. These are some great changes and signal, yet again, that Blizz is finally willing to evolve its approach to the game, and the game itself. You love to see it!Comment by JosielAlmost two decades to understand that people needed the functionality Bartender and MoveAnything provided. I do commend them for making the customization more beginner friendly than Bartender, but I also worry that that was at the cost of more freedom.Comment by mybelovedchaosI love all of this, I cant wait to play with it! I am most excited about being able to save the layout since I like to level new toons, the worst part is setting up my UI the way I want with every toon.Comment by AshleyCan’t wait to play with this. Hoping there’s an option to remove portraits from the unit frames.Comment by orca2017So I no longer need bartender..it's now integrated in the game..omg !this is fantastic ..hated having so many add ons...Comment by xeeeoNThis looks awesome and i can't wait to test it and maybe delete ElvUI.
I really hope they will let us customize the player, target etc. unit frame. Remove the portrait, make the mana bar smaller etc. something you can do with addons like elvui.Comment by ManCubuSThis is such a MVP feature that we needed, super stoked we're going to be able to customize everything. Goodbye over 9000 addons!

The only thing I wish them to add is to be able to enable old classic style design of action bars and icons - f.e. I liked horse icon on mounts tab, now it's going to be horseshoe or old gryphon design.Comment by lovelywazThere goes about half of my, if not more, UI related addons. And it's a good thing! 😀Comment by Samidareto anybody trying this. Is there an option to hide frames out of combat? Looks great so farComment by VaidennCan we have an option for Class colored player and target unit frames. I like to replace the green health bar color with the unique color of that class.Comment by OswaldovzkiThese are the changes I am most looking forward to. And look at that Video, the number of slots went to 13 and wasn't even half the slider. That's exciting! :DComment by VulpturiusI do hope they will also change the way that the info box will not be in the right bottom corner but attached to the mouse cursor. If this will change maybe i will not need any addons anymore what like everybody else is saying will improve the overall gamplay experience.Comment by SoeroahPretty much seems to do everything I wanted from an addon other than changing the icon shapes and art, but this is neat. Hopefully they allow for contextual action bars in the future, like showing a profession-assigned bar while near a profession node or table, or fishing when you're holding a rod or walking on water.