Accessibility In Video Games
Eli sent me this screenshot of an accessibility plugin for World of Warcraft.
Its a pretty useful plugin, even for those of you who arnt visually impaired. Reading a literal label such as “Friendly” or “Honored” is much faster to compute than translating the color in to a status.
However I think the quality of items would be easier to interpret as colors, since the quality doesnt get translated in to “uncommon” or “epic” in our heads. Experienced players already have a strong color association for item quality because of their importance in the game and for the focus on the color (”.. is anyone selling blue items.. “) than the label.
The quest level label is useful for everyone. even though several quests could be yellow, they could be different levels.
It’s unfortunate that we think of rarity in terms of color. Of course we do that because the game doesn’t display the text, e.g. Uncommon. If it did, i’d use those terms. In fact i hardly know what they are.