On September 27th Jagex brought us 3 new game updates. One of those was the change of the game-interface. Two hours later there were made over 1.000 topics in Recent Updates mostly about the new interface. All of these topics were mostly players who were ranting about having the old interface back. It actually looked like the time Jagex changed the website layout. For a week the forums were spammed with how ugly and bad it was. But since that after a week was forgotten I think this will be forgotten in maybe 2 weeks. And let’s face it; can you remember how the old website looked like? We just need some time to adept our self and we eventually forget how the old interface looked like. But I didn’t wrote this article just to tell you that you will just forget the old interface. No, in this article I will discuss the new interface in detail, telling you what is good and what is bad. I’ll be starting from the top and work down to the bottom.

Compass – Good change
They’ve changed it so that it looks more like a real compass instead of the old one. And they did a good job on that. The main problem with this change is that not everyone knows were east and west is. And right now those people got a problem since they can’t find it on the compass anymore. Personally I think that this shouldn’t be a problem at all. It’s just two little things you need to learn. That can’t be that hard.

Attack style – Bad change
In this menu some things are moved, added or removed. First there are the new attack style buttons. In my opinion it’s not good to hover over an item to see if you get attack, strength or defence exp. I got my biggest problem here since I used to select the spell already and enable it when needed. That option is gone now and that’s pretty sad. Now you’ve to go trough the spell select menu every time. A thing that is good is that they added the Auto Retaliate to this menu. It truly belongs here. I think it’s just it should be in the bottom below the special attack bar plus it should be a bit smaller. Chances are big now to click on that button instead of the special attack bar.

Skill page – Not bad/not good
Only change is the colour of characters. This is for every user different if they like it or not. It might be a bit dark but colour-blind people can still see clearly what their levels are.

Equipment page – good change
I’ve always wanted to see the effect of some items on my stats while I’m wearing my normal outfit. So usually I would equip an item and quickly change to the stats screen to see what stats get affected and by how much. Now you have all the time in the world to see that. Besides that it’s fun to see how your character looks in close-up. You can even do some nice things in that menu. Try playing with your marionette for example. Minor bad thing is that the weight status is also on that page.

Settings page – Good idea but can be better.
A good thing about this page is that all the settings are together. Also 1 button instead of an on and off button is better in my opinion. Note for the people who are saying that the run button is to small. Keep in mind that you can click anywhere on that button to switch between walking and running. You can click on the picture on the checkboxes and even on the running energy percentage. Besides that, who ever use that button? If I want to run I just click while holding the [Ctrl]-button. In my opinion way faster then going through a menu.
Second thing that’s good are the sliders. However they could have changed the information if you’re hovering over it with your mouse. Now it says what it does and not that you’re in bright mode. Second is that they could shrink a bit so that the other settings can be displayed larger or you can use the space to display the current weight, like it was in the previous interface.

Emote page – Will be a good change for the future.
Well this is a huge change. This will be a case of getting used to. I still click here to see how much energy I got left for example. But about the page itself: it’s good, believe it or not. The reason Jagex did this is because there are coming other languages for Runescape. Problem is that most languages have usually longer words than the English version. So that’s why they’re are trying to get rid of the text buttons. For example the emote: “Jump for joy” would be in German (According to Babel Fish Translations) “springen Sie für Freude” and in French “Sautez pour la joie”. See the difference?

Icons – Good improvement
I do not agree with any silly reason given that it’s childish (well except for the smilies, those don’t match the other symbols). The old interface was actually really ugly. They used very few colours in the previous interface and that’s what they improved. There’s nothing to complain about. (Except for those smilies, I still don’t like them.)