Wei Wu Wei is an interesting concept in Taoism. Essentially, in English, it means “Action without Action.” The overall goal of Wei Wu Wei is to act without thinking about the actions itself. From the Wu Wei Wikipedia article :
“The goal for wu wei is to get out of your own way, so to speak. This is like when you are playing an instrument and if you start thinking about playing the instrument, then you will get in your own way and interfere with your own playing. It is aimless action, because if there was a goal that you need to aim at and hit, then you will develop anxiety about this goal.”
The overall goal of the next few articles is to apply Wei Wu Wei to World of Warcraft. In particular, to the UI and how we control it, creating a Wei Wu Wei UI (W^3UI). But first, we should look at two examples of previous implementations of this concept in the digital world.
The first example is a small application for the OSX called QuickSilver . At its core, QuickSilver is nothing more than an application launcher. What makes it different is how it works, You assign it to a key combination of your choosing, and it pops up in a small window on your screen. Type in the name of the program or file your looking for and hit enter and it will open that application or file. As you use it more, it figures out what you use it to open the most, so it will guess what your trying to open as you type.
Of course, there is more to Quicksilver than what I described, but that covers the important part. Using it becomes easy after a day or two, and second nature after a about a week. I’ve used it so much that when it crashes I feel lost without it. This “second nature” feel is the overall goal we want to achieve with the WOW GUI.
The second example actually comes from an older WOW UI idea called “Speed Kills UI”. This UI is what I found back about 2 years ago when I started researching WoW Add-ons. It’s a brilliant concept; all your actions at your fingertips without having to click a single button. The problem is that Speed Kills concept used Discord Mods, which recently have fallen out of favor, due to the learning curve and the lack of updates. You will find that most of my concepts for Wei Wu Wei UI are improvements to concepts laid out by Speed Kills.
It’s important to note that W^3UI is not a specific set of Add-Ons for WoW, but a overall concept to using the WOW UI to our advantage without it getting in the way. The UI needs to be fluid for each class, rather than the rigid UI packs that most people release. During the articles, ill mention specific mods I use, but any mod that you’re comfortable with can be used as long as it has similar functionality. W^3UI can be applied to even the default UI if you so wish!
I’m going to break down the overall concept into a few different articles. The first will be the weaknesses of the default UI and how you control the game. So to prepare to implement W^3UI concepts, I suggest going back to the default UI. Play with it for a few kills, get a feel for the strengths and weaknesses of it. For whatever class you play, study what spells/actions you use. You will most likely find you have a few different groups of spells/actions. There will be ones you need constant access to, ones you use frequently, ones you barely use, and ones you never use. Keep this list; we will use it in a future article.
So what can you expect from Wei Wu Wei UI? With 2 or less key presses I have any action I need to use available to me. I find myself ready for my next action/spell before the Global Cool down Timer ends, so it makes me play faster and cast more effectively. Most of all, once I got used to the changes, I stopped thinking about what keys I needed to hit to perform an action, but what action would be the best to use in the situation. This helps you react quicker to changes in the event.
In short, Wei Wu Wei UI will make you a better, more effective player.
Romb.us by Rick Kosbab, Rick -at- romb.us, you're not reading this, are you?