14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Blizzard aims to mostly deliver gameplay-related changes in the upcoming 6.1 patch for World of Warcraft, but the company is also introducing some changes to the user interface in order to make it easier for gamers who have visual issues linked to colorblindness to play the MMO and enjoy it with as little frustration as possible.
A new Accessibility interface configuration section is added to the title and a range of options are introduced, with tooltips used in order to explain the colors used when the game talks about NPCs, other players or items.
Blizzard details in the Battle.net announcement that "when you move your mouse cursor over a piece of rare gear and then a piece of epic gear, the game colors the names of the items blue and then purple, respectively. With 'UI Colorblind Mode' enabled, the game will add the words 'Rare' and 'Epic' to the tooltips for those items."
The three colorblind filters introduced to World of Warcraft are: protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia.
The company also urges all those who are playing the MMO to get tested in order to know whether they have a problem with their vision and to take the steps required to remedy it or make sure that it does not affect them in the long term.
World of Warcraft is the only MMO that can rely on subscriptions
At the moment, the Blizzard product is the only one in its genre that can rely on its player base to pay a monthly subscription, and it seems that there are no plans to move it towards free-to-play for the foreseeable future.
The most recent financial results show that the player base is somewhat stable around the 10 million mark.
Blizzard might be aiming to announce a new major expansion after it launches 6.1, although it's not clear what new races or classes can be added to the MMO after the content that was part of Warlords of Draenor.
World of Warcraft has recently revealed that sales of one of its pets managed to raise a lot of money for charities that are fighting Ebola in Africa and that more community-focused events might be introduced in the future.