Fellowship Finds a Solution to Longstanding MMO UI Issues
Games/RPG

Fellowship Finds a Solution to Longstanding MMO UI Issues

Fellowship offers a fresh approach to interface challenges that have affected MMOs like World of Warcraft for years.

I’ve been enjoying Fellowship more than I expected over the weekend—at first, I thought “WoW’s Mythic+ without the MMO” would be a glorified daycare for World of Warcraft players who are too old to keep up with newfangled grinds. And I was right (partially because I’m one of them), but also, it’s just a really clever little game.

I could talk on and on about how it de-incentivizes toxicity, has some really neat boss and class designs, and a progression system that constantly rewards you instead of de-leveling your key and taking your lunch money. And I might. But the thing I’m really impressed by is one tiny little UI feature that solves a problem that’s been plaguing World of Warcraft (and other MMOs) for years—decades, even.

In MMOs, a secondary responsibility for damage dealers—other than blasting—is interrupting enemy spellcasting. Specific abilities need to be interrupted or else the pull of that particular dungeon gets way harder. This adds a nice layer of coordination if you’re playing with friends, but let’s face it—the majority of dungeon runs are probably done with pick-up groups.

Fellowship’s fix for this is a neat solution: players can pre-emptively mark a target as their interrupt target, displaying an icon next to the enemy’s health bar. If their interrupt is on cooldown, it shows how many seconds are left until it’s back up. This makes Fellowship far more pick-up group-friendly than it otherwise would be, enhancing the overall experience.

Beneath the surface, this functionality helps communicate a lot of necessary information in a single glance. Fellowship effectively addresses a common annoyance in the genre, suggesting potential improvements that could benefit a broad array of MMOs.

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