After declaring he was quite familiar with our website, I mostly took over the interview.  Mark is not a very big fan of Warcraft and as it turns out, it would be a good interview to add to my resume because at the end of the interview Jay declares that our interview was the only interview he had taken notes while he was talking.

Accessible Gaming and World of Warcraft

My first question was actually more of a marker to see how much impact AbleGamers has had with the Warcraft team in making accessibility a priority in their development process.  I asked if there was any more accessibility on the horizon after the excellent inclusion of colorblind options in 3.1.

Jay responded that "most problems associated with the disabled gamers involves the user interface" and that's the problem because "the user interface team is the one team that gets bogged down the most."

He went on to say that, the team must decide between adding accessibility, adding features, fixing bugs, and many other wish list items.  Jay explains that the team does their best to bounce between all of the items on the list.

My next question was about the mouse and camera sensitivity speed.  Many of you come to our site to find ways to adjust the speed of the game to suit your play style.  Jay was reminded about the console command to set the speed of both options beyond the capabilities of the sliders built into the default UI.  I asked if there was any possibility that the slider could be allowed to have more functionality and increase or decrease the speed beyond what it currently can.

Jay explains that it is certainly something that could be looked into for the next expansion.  However, Blizzard fears that in many situations, people may set the mouse sensitivity so low that they may not be able to play the game properly.  If the mouse sensitivity is set to a point that detrimentally affects the speed of the game, users may be turned away thinking that the game is supposed to be that slow, when in fact they merely mis-set an option.

Currently, those who have dexterity problems can set the mouse speed in World of Warcraft to a more sensitive setting by typing "/console mouseSpeed 25" directly into the chat window.  Conversely, for those that have control problems, you may set the number anywhere from 1-25, where one is the lowest number and the slowest speed.

The next question was about mounts vs. vehicles, with many vehicles, it is difficult to use the click to move interface.  Our question was if the right-click to move option was supposed to be disabled in vehicles or if it was a bug that could be fixed.  Jay was confused by the question at first but after explaining in better detail (I write much better than I talk) he quickly and amusingly announced that he "is on camera and if we could see him, we would be seeing him take out a notepad to write down the problem to pass on to the Q and A."

Our final interface question was whether it is possible that the jump button could be included in the interface as a clickable button or a command that can be macroed.  Jay explains that there is no reasons he could think of as to why that feature is not already included but that "most of the reasons why a certain features are not added to the interface is because they can be exploited."

Once again, the trusty notepad was whipped out to write down even more ideas!  (I was very proud.)

AbleGamers fan question

Our first AbleGamers fan question was from Carilock, Turalyon (US) who asked:

End game raiding tends to favor those who can react and push buttons quickly, which causes some frustration for people with reaction time issues. I understand the challenge with trying to keep the elite players happy and the reason behind the "one key press = one action" rule, but are there any plans to make end game a little more friendly for the cognitively-impaired?

Jay's response was simple and came with a deep "I'm thinking" type breath, "Unfortunately, the point of the end game content is to be difficult for Raiders and if we make things easier for the cognitively impaired, the fight ends up being "very very very easy" for everyone else."

I think he might have gone on about this topic but I was feeling pressured to get all the questions in and ended up cutting him off...oops.

The next question, which I obviously asked too quickly, was about a colorblindness problem that many people face in end game raiding.  Many of the boss fights are color dependent.  For example, in Kara one of the Dragon fights involves three different portals that have three different colors and the fight is won or lost by standing in the correct color at the correct time.  We wanted to know if there would be any possibility of adding anything to distinguish one portal from another other than the color.

Comments (5)

Carol Williams

August 28, 2009

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Great interview and article. It really shows how tuned in the WoW development team is to the disabled members of the community. I really needed to see this today, Steve, thanks.

Steve Spohn

August 28, 2009

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Thanks Cari!

Aaron Baker

September 01, 2009

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Thanks for the excellent interview! It's welcomed & very much appreciated!

Quad

September 01, 2009

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I'm a HUGE TIME FAN of WoW, but the 1 problem i have with the game is being able to turn around really fast, and that comes from not being able to macro movements. To turn really fast, you need to hold the right button WHILE Turning the mouse. very difficult. for me. I hope they fi that soon.

Steve Spohn

September 02, 2009

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Quad,

I also have difficulty turning quickly but setting the console command definitely helps. Try out this part of the article, unless you already have.

"Currently, those who have dexterity problems can set the mouse speed in World of Warcraft to a more sensitive setting by typing "/console mouseSpeed 25" directly into the chat window. Conversely, for those that have control problems, you may set the number anywhere from 1-25, where one is the lowest number and the slowest speed."

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