Just some random musings.
I played WoW a little while back, leveling a fury panda to level 20 in order to get the Liadrin portrait in Hearthstone. The game did not scratch my itch at all. In fact, it was quite off-putting. So, after resubbing recently based on the feedback here and from friends, I was starting to get the same feeling and I couldn't quite understand why.
It's the UI. Blizzard's default UI sucks so fucking much that it's a major detractor to getting people interested in the game. Look here, no look here, now look there. Information all over the fucking screen. The default chat window is tiny and full of conflicting and mostly useless information. Having a conversation with a friend interspersed with loot, xp, and rep information is horrible.
I know this is old information and most people play with tons of mods, including myself from 5 years ago. After fixing up my UI(thanks for the recommendation on elvui), it all felt much more familiar. Like a huge obstacle to playing the game had been removed and I could actually concentrated on the valuable stuff. I'm just surprised there's been basically no improvements to the default UI all these years. Blizzard used to absorb mods in the early days, like scrolling combat text. Why stop?