inglorious

I thought this was an interesting install screen. I wanted to check out phasing, a local instance concept Blizzard introduced with the latest World of Warcraft expansion: Wrath of the Litch King. While watching the game install I noticed an attractive little bonus that made the install-watching much more pleasant. Blizzard entertains by displaying a story that gives a bit of a history on the game and the world. The user can navigate though the slides via a left and right arrows. It was a subtle and nice touch, allowing me, the user to move though the slides at my own pace.

I’ve seen a few other installers attempt this, and most of the time they automatically flip you through the narrative as the installer hits various percentages of install. Most of the time it moves too slow or two fast. Blizzard also slowly flips though slides but it gives plenty of time and the fact I can always go back a slide helps it not feel so rushed. The ambiguous “stop” button floating at the bottom was one minor usability issue that bugged me. This stops the installation but it’s located near the narrative, a user could confuse that with stopping the auto-playing slides as opposed to the installation.

Blizzard could flip the placement of the narrative and the progress bar; it would assist in tying the stop button with the installation and also tie the narrative in with the slides. Even with that minor issue it was nice to have a story recap that didn’t feel forced upon me or tedious to follow as I waited for the next 10% to be installed.