World of Warcraft’s patch 11.1, which is currently available on the public test realm and will shortly be rolled-out to all players, looks like it’s fixed one of the game’s most enduring issues: swirlies. These are ground markers that telegraph incoming damage to players, such as an AoE boss attack, and basically they’ve always been a bit of a pain to make out when amidst the cavalcade of other effects the game’s typically throwing up during such encounters.
There are a number of UI mods to counteract the issue but Blizzard’s decided to fix the problem at source, with the new patch giving swirlies a much clearer and more defined outline. The difference between old and new is immediately obvious, which is a tremendously good thing given that the whole point of these things is to tell you where not to stand if you want to live.
Blizzard describes the changes thus (via WoWHead):
- The graphic is no longer one large swirl. Instead, the swirl animation is only seen in the border of the circle.
- The rest of the circle is filled transparently to give a greater emphasis on where it is safe to stand.
- The border of the swirl is much brighter than the rest of the graphic.
The new swirlies can be seen in action in this clip from a player on the PTR. They’re much easier to see! That’s it! Hurrah!
The change comes not long after Blizzard began to address certain aspects of WoW’s HUD and UI, or more specifically started taking aim at issues that players were solving with add-ons. In June last year WoW added private auras which limit UI add-on functionality, and at the time associate game director Morgan Day said, “A lot of what it boils down to is reclaim[ing] some design space.”
Day specifically addressed swirlies at the time, saying they’d become more ubiquitous in part because of addons. “That’s become more of a baseline,” said Day, while WoW’s director Ion Hazzikostas says it’s part of a wider push to stop add-on bloat and players using cumbersome workarounds that hamper the experience.
“I think we’ve approached War Within with a desire to refine our continued use of that tool,” says Hazzikostas, “to steer clear of applying it in areas that we know are going to cause more frustrating behaviour, and to continue to use it in areas where we think it can allow [for] player decision making and creativity that isn’t delegated to addons automatically.”
WoW’s problem is not an easy one to fix because, unlike for example Final Fantasy 14, it doesn’t have a unified telegraph system, but a big old pile of bespoke effects and markers. Swirlies are a mainstay but this unifies their visual design in a new way, and in the longer term that’s what the whole private aura thing is about: Reducing the need for add-ons by improving the baseline experience. Lest you think this is a minor thing, as it stands WoW’s telegraphs are so cluttered that even the best guild in the world is using darkening potions during raids so they can fight more effectively.