I'm colour blind and it was summit I was constantly asking about our UI. Far as a know Carrie altered it to be Colour blind friendly, so far I have not had any complaints.
 

Basic usability stuff, which most games don't give a lot of thought to I suspect. For MMOs I think they really should, with "normal" games the lifespan may be so short that it doesn't make much sense financially to put too much effort into it. Then again, it's not like it would cost much to do this part right if you are already employing a usability person.
 

Grayscale would ruin it even more for the colour blind. Colour blind doesn't mean you can't see any colours but given the specific condition you see one individual colour as another.
 

I remember this coming up in a huge thread on the WoW forums when it was first released and what followed afterwards... oddly... was a campaign by some for WoW to be adjusted for... Arachnaphobia.

It was pointed out that less than 2% of people are colour blind, while nearly 20% have some form of strong fear of spiders.

An addon was created to change parts of the interface that were prone to cause confusion among colour-blind players and I believe Blizzard has made suitable changes so it's no longer needed.

Another mod was created to replace all of the spider models in the game with other creature models, but Blizzard deemed this an intrusive outside application (it wasn't via the addon interface) and banned it.
 

Another good reason never to visit the WoW forums...aranophobia is hardly a genetic defect as color blindness and not rarely even curable - unlike colorblindness. As a matter of fact approximately 8-10% of males are affected by color blindness.

Back to Tobolds question...sorry for zoning out: As "anonymous" wrote above: What is typically referred to as colorblindness does not mean not seeing colors at all. This latter 'illness' also exists but is REALLY RARE (approx. 1 per 1^7 humans). The kind of very frequent color blindness - which I guess Tobold meant - is more or less an inability to recognize one color (e.g. green) and thus having problems to tell apart certain shades of green and red/brown.
Personally, I often manage to circumvent this problem (in talks etc) by using really different colors (blue, yellow, red, black) which are not typical 'problem-colors' for color blind people.

But hey, I deeply bow because this problem is discussed here :-)!
 

Not MMO related, but here's my story.

I'm a project manager for a DoD contractor. I was giving a monthly report to my boss and boss's boss. I spent days in powerpoint color coding the status page. Red, Yellow, Green. I had the extra time for once so I put the extra effort into it.

I get to the meeting and get to my color slide. I'm proud. I'm arrogant. I'm smug. Boss's boss says, "That's great, but I don't get it, where are we in the program? What's at risk???" After some discussion, he reveals he's colorblind. Doh! More discussion, boss is colorblind too! Double doh! I was the only one in the room that could read the chart! I thought they were pulling my leg but verified later through a friend that I had indeed misjudged my audience. :)
 

Yeah, this was one thing I noticed in WAR. Blizzard is very good at using both shape and colour to convey information, while Mythic goes for colour and detail.

That means pretty much every icon in WAR is a round circle. Even for non-colour blind people, it's harder to tell them apart.
 

I'm color blind and this is a sore spot with me. I don't want grayscale, but I do want the ability to be able to change colors of certain UI elements.

In WAR, the most difficult thing to distinguish is the red fog-of-war indicating the questing area and the available/completed/active markers.

In WoW, many boss fights involved colors and some were all but impossible. Particularly the beams at Netherspite.

People with color blindness get used to this kind of thing and adapt to it, but it doesn't make it any easier. For such a surprisingly common disability, it is often overlooked or even outright ignored from a usability standpoint.
 

It was pointed out that less than 2% of people are colour blind

5% of the male population is color blind or 1 in 20. I've read that 25% of MMO populations are female -- so that means better than 1 out of every 25 players experiences color blindness. While that's not a majority, that's a significant group that is largely ignored.
 

Puzzle Pirates has gone a long ways to make sure that each puzzle is color blind safe. Even so, sometimes the community points out that it could be better, and several mods have popped up to address the issue.

Considering how easily and quickly the graphics are modded (just a few minutes in Photoshop), I think it's ill-advised not to create color blind options, and give users the control over whether or not they are used. (It's also worth considering opening those UI elements to user modification; if it's handled client-side, there's little reason to fuss.)

Also, as noted, there are different types of color blindness. It's nice to have a few different sets of options, since someone who is completely color blind sees things very differently from a green/blue color blind viewpoint.

Bottom line, yes, anyone creating a game that hopes to reach a fair number of people should consider color blindness and compensate accordingly. Holistic game design can be hard to compensate in, but UI is actually pretty easy to take care of. (Speaking as a guy who has worked on game UI; once the whole design is locked in, setting up color blind options shouldn't be more than one artist's work for a day.)
 

It's not just color blindness that's an issue. There are a lot of relatively small changes that can be made to MMOG UI designs which would make them significantly easier for many people with various kinds of disabilities to play.

If this is something of interest to anyone, I strongly recommend reading the article I wrote for Massively a while back about disabled gamers: http://www.massively.com/2008/04/28/player-vs-everything-gaming-with-a-disability/
 

Hmm. Seems that link got chopped off, Anyway, just search Massively.com for "disabled gamers" if you want to read it.
 

I'm color blind and have a great deal of difficulty in some MMOs. I had to give up DAoC because I couldn't distinguish between blue and purple mobs. WOW is mostly playable, but even it presents problems.

Thanks for raising this important issue. I've heard that some 10% of males are colorblind (vs. 1-2% for femails), so there are a lot of us out there.
 

Numbers should solve the problem just fine... why does the quest have to be red when it could just say level 33
 

I'm partially color blind and have enormous difficulties with quest signs over NPC's heads in WAR for example. Bright green and yellow are same colors for me...
 

An add-on like QuestFu in WoW labels each quest by level as well as colour, so no more trying to guess whether something is easy or impossible.
 

@sid67: I agree, it shouldn't be ignored. The point of my reply is that there are many accessibility issues.

This is one that has been addressed to a degree by Blizzard and as Paul Barnett points above, by Mythic too.

Answering Tobold's initial question directly:

I believe there will always be content and UI elements that affect colour-blind players, it's simply not 100% solvable unless you exclude entire colour palettes that are pleasing and instantly recognizable to the rest of the population. This topic also skips that there are varying types and degrees of colour-blindness, so providing a solution for all is IMHO not likely.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be tried, I'm saying results may vary.

I think it's really odd that on a topic of inclusivity, that there are multiple comments dividing it into gender, quick to point out higher percentages for males and that the game populace is largely male. I knew some may take offence to the percentages I posted (not my own, I was referencing an old thread), but putting a gender spin on it was well, contradictory to the entire sentiment, wasn't it?

Before you get offended here, ask yourself this, do I have any disabilities that are affected by gameplay?

Accessibility is a tricky subject in an industry that's all about input / output.
 

Doesn't DAoC have +s and -s next to names to show level differences, in addition to colors? And yes, numbers work too.
 

I am always surprised at it because it's not a small portion. estimates vary between 7% and 12% of US males and a smaller portion of females are colorblind. This is a huge number and I'm always shocked game developers completely ignore it. They are not interested in their dollars I guess.
 

Actually while we're at it almost no web authoring programs or websites in general are accessibility enabled. They are all visual, and often make a nightmare of spaghetti code that makes work very difficult to operate. So blind people have a lot harder time surfing, even though you'd think it would be easy.

All it would take is paying attention when first starting to standards, but you know that takes time, and knowledge, which means money.
 

I don't care about stats on who is and who's not, but having problems with close colors such as blue/purple and red/greens have made identifying an epics versus blues in a heroic instance a challenge and nightbanes "beams" are always a lots of fun... esp. when you're the tank looking for the red beam portal opening.

Yes, I'm male and yes, I've been tested professionaly about the issue. It sucks!


K.
 

@Rog: I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a "color picker" for UI elements. Color is a very simple value to change in the UI.

Changing the color of confusing models (like herb nodes) and such is another matter. That would look out of place and be difficult to code.

But the UI sits on top of the game engine and each color you see only has 4 values (r,g,b,alpha). You already have the ability to change many of them (text colors for example), so why not extend that to most things.

I also think this type of change would be helpful to not only the colorblind, but anyone who wants to make a particular thing standout a bit more in the UI.
 

@sid67: It's not too much to ask at all, but given that all of the UI elements in these games can be modified, is it really that big of an issue?

At least all of the major MMORPGs I know of have things like colour and position as something that can easily be changed. There may not be noticeable tools in the default settings to do so, but it's not difficult to install an addon or modify some XML in WoW, CoH, AoC, EQ, etc..

Anonymous poster above, perfect example: There are several WoW addons that modify item text colours. This is something you can already change to suit your needs.

As for in-game non-UI items and effects, well that's not as easily remedied, as noted above. But most get by these sort of things via context. WoW's boss fights nonwithstanding, even not being colour-blind I think purely colour-related clues without corresponding position and/or sound changes, well that's just poor game design.