I’ve written in the past about MMORPG user interfaces and their complexity. However easy we as gamers might think these games are to play, if you can get an external perspective, as I have playing World of Warcraft with elderly relatives.

One aspect of this I’ve not covered is the weirdly complex user interfaces most MMORPGs have – a combination of mouse clicks through the graphical user interface (menus, hotbars, etc.) and usually some keyboard input (pressing hotbar numbers, WASD movement, etc).

Like many older MMORPG gamers, I had a gaming history in another genre. I played, among other styles of games a lot of first-person shooters in the 1990s. That gave me keyboard movement skills that translate very well to most MMORPGs. Being able to strafe, for instance, can be a real asset during “avoid all the bad stuff” boss battles.

Those…