Lots of details on the processes involved in achieving a modern, cohesive corporate identity on the web, while leaving room to keep the look of each section fresh and interesting.
Even has bits and bobs on site display on mobiles, from iPhones to teeny, tiny Nokias like mine.
I really, really love how Sacred Gold handles inventory.
Yes, down to the fact that each potion takes its own discrete tile. In Sacred 2, they made potions stackable, but somehow that wasn’t as awesome.
Sacred Gold’s system gives me the feeling that I’m actually packing stuff into my character’s bags. ~_o God knows why, but that makes me a happy, tickled nugget.
I think it’s a throwback from my days of playing tons of Tetris. Tetris + loot = win!
Client was looking for an exclusive, sophisticated site design for chartered flights. These mocks are all about the elegance of simplicity – making information easy to find, while emphasizing the whole idea of flight through airy lightness.
I usually try to avoid ipsum lorem in my work, as I feel that it’s much, much better if some kind of content can be provided – even if it’s only dummy content that I’ve created from surfing the web and googling my subject. However, in this case, ipsum lorem did creep in, because I wasn’t provided with the info I needed to fill in even the most basic blanks.
This is part of the work I did while at Clique Interactive.
Unfortunately, the client was unable to visualise how the Vanilla style could be reskinned to adapt to campaigns. As a result, I did up 2 more versions, showing how different campaigns could possibly handle the reskinning.
Additionally, although I originally followed Apple’s guidelines for the icons in the bottom navigation bar, it was felt that there wasn’t enough ‘uniqueness’ to it. This Formal skin, and the visuals in the next post (Quirky skin), addressed that issue.
So, like all the masses of Guild Wars players out there, I said to myself YIPPEE! More bank storage tabs! And a free tab for the anniversary period, wooties!
…and that’s where the whole problem started.
NCSoft didn’t beef up their servers at all / enough (not sure which), to handle the amount of interested customers in that feature, making it almost impossible to log in.
Additionally, instead of using the Guild Wars Online Store – accessed directly via your own account on GW once you’ve logged in, they force you to go to PlayNC and log in with your PlayNC account, which is discrete from your GW account.
This means that many people who don’t remember what on earth their PlayNC accounts were, or like me, what the passwords were for them went ???
That’s fine yah? Just get a new password sent! Nope, not so fine when your server drops the connection almost every time, because it’s too busy. And then decides that ‘you’ve tried too many times even though I dropped the connection because I was too busy, try again in a few hours.’ Added to this is that due to the load, I assume, their human-verification graphic thingies (I HATE those), load so slowly that by the time you submit the form after it’s loaded, the whole thing has expired.
…but no, this isn’t just a pointless rant! The point is coming soon. This is just the buildup!
After about 24 hours, I finally manage to get my password changed, and log in. I click on the Xunlai Storage Pane, Buy Now, and eventually come to this page.
You’ll see that the page is a bit different from the actual page, because only after the fact did I realise I was angry enough to log back in for a screencap, as a result this line “There was some text here telling me to type ‘FREESTORAGE’ into the coupon bit. It said NOTHING about no purchase or applying the coupon immediately.” is not the line shown on the actual page, before you change your account. Because I had to log in again to capture the screen, the actual line was already gone.
…This page imo, makes it look like you have to purchase a tab in order to take advantage of the free storage offer. You don’t. But I did purchase one. Because that is what I thought it was forcing me to do.
And I was angry. Even though I was going to purchase the max no. of tabs anyway.
And what do I find when I log into GW? Well. The tab I purchased was in, and the free storage was not. So I had to go back to PlayNC, wait for their farce of a login system again, and realise that what I was actually supposed to do was to type ‘FREESTORAGE’ in the coupon area and press “Apply Coupon”.
To all those people who said ‘the wiki shows it really clearly’, having a wiki is NOT an excuse for such plainly sloppy and deceptive User Interface design.
I can honestly see no reason other than systemic incompetence OR a desire to deceive customers in precisely the way I was deceived, to implement it the way NCSoft did.
Instead of doing that, they could have:
All of those would have worked.
The worst thing about this whole stupid setup by NCSoft in the PlayNC store to me, is that it was totally unecessary. Most people who play Guild Wars happily are going to buy all the tabs anyway. There was no NEED to deceive me into buying things I was already going to buy!
Now, instead, I have NOT bought the other three tabs, though I doubtless will in the future.
I’m just too pissed off at NCSoft to want to right now.
I design UIs as part of my job. Seeing something like this, plus the user response online trying justify such behaviour with reference to a wiki when faced with a grumpy person, as opposed to someone who warned of the exact same thing earlier – before I could log in to get my tab, gives me just that little extra insight into how users react to things based on context.
In the first instance they were feeling defensive FOR GW and NCSoft (though why I don’t know), while in the second instance, the person just stated the situation outright without ranting and no one jumped on him with ‘it was in wiki’.
Worst part is, I really admire many of the UI elements in GW itself.
Of McNuggets and Pikachcthulus 
