faBBe

Let's list the benefits of each, is there really anything better in the old icons ?

I'm myself making an original everquest style UI. I'd like to see the balance tip in favor of the old ones.. but not for the nostalgy, there has to be a gameplay value to it.

Old icons
- more 3d ish look (gems)
- better colour coding (or better visible)

New Icons
- more detail
- more variety

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Yelara

Maybe it's just because I was so faminiar with them but I found the old icons much easier to differentiate. When I looked at my buff bar or my casting bar I coulod tell what I was clicking on. The new icons, while very pretty and very customizable, sre very vague to me. Theyre TOO detailed, making them harder to tell at a glance what they are. Colors are washed out and theyre too stylized.

I've tried the TKing ones (beautiful works of art but I cant use them - I can't tell what I'm casting or what buffs I have on) as well as several others and have reverted back to a set I found that were closely modeled after the original icons.

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Leandred

I like the ripped ones from WC3.

Didn't had any problems "learning" what is what.
But I'm a Paladin so not that many spells to keep
track of...

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Leandred Cerwelan
Lord Protector of Tunare
Remedy @ Nameless

faBBe

Most important is the gameplay element.

Icons are 'signs', they are images which tell a message usually much quicker than text would.

With spell gems, there are different ways to group them, colours could have been used to differentiate elements (earth , air ) etc.. I think in the old ui it was used to differentiate the RANGE of the spells ?

So the yellow ones were self only.

I noticed that most particularly on a 20ish wizard there was many colours, blue , red , green background spell gems were common. Some were for area damage, some for single target damage.

I dont think this is the case with the new icons ? Maybe I didnt look at them properly.

Kiriani

I love the t.King icons, and the WC3 ones are pretty slick too. TKings are a brilliant work of 3D art, I wish I was as talented in that aspect (I'm a pencil and bristol board kinda guy, only thing I use the PC for is touching up and better coloring for my frames). The WC3 ones are pretty nice too, having that "hardcore" feeling to them.

However, I have found the new default icons much easier to ID at a glance, and they are much more diverse than the old ones. For example, I can now tell SoW apart from ANya' QUickening (for example) at a glance and don't have to think in my head the order they were in. I can tell Call of Earth from Aego from Spikecoat all at a quick glance.

With TKings, they are just too cluttered, and at 1280X1024, they are not easily identified. I often had to hold down Alt and hover over my buff bar to figure out what all was fading and what all I had.

As for WC3 icons, they don't exactly convey what they are at a glance either. They are too dissimilar from the EQ icons, which means you have to learn them all over again.

I've decided to stick it out with the default set, unless I start penning some interesting new ones, but they will still be based on the current ones, only better coloring and detail I think.

As somebody said above me, the purpose of a UI is to make information readily available and easily understandable at a glance. I find the default icons do this quite well. If you can obstruct the least amount of vision and present the most information in a clear and concise manner, you've done your job correctly.

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Ranger of Tunare
Familjen Saryrn
"Sometimes the Laws of Man must be broken in order to do what is right"