Something that makes me wonder..

[Killarny]

One fairly widespread common trend in UIs (screenshots, mods, mod requests) that I've noticed in Everquest 2, but hardly any of the other games I've played, is the desire for UI layouts that have tons of information displayed.

It seems like a lot of Everquest 2 players prefer more cluttered UIs, with information ranging from Earth time/date to player resistance values to chat windows filling up nearly half of the screen to letterboxing that removes better than 40% of the screen space. Many of the UIs in the what does you current ui look like?(sic) thread feature screenshots of UIs that have lots of wasted space and obscured game area.

I've never played EQ1, but from the few screenshots I've seen of UIs from it, this trend existed back then as well.

I have never really noticed this trend in other games as much.

Personally I prefer transparent windows near the edges of my screen, to maximize my 'play area' and to give myself a greater unoccupied viewspace to look at the game.

I tend towards mods such as MookHUD, which provide more useful information without obscuring any game area, and without making the window any larger than needed. Humudce has his classic XP bars which, while increasing the size of the XP window, provide at-a-glance information that is needed often enough to make the trade-off worth it.

Information such as player resistances, AC, and such are on the hotkeyed player screen, so I don't need it showing all the time. The few times when I might actually care about the absolute value of my poison resistance, well, I can just push 'P' and look.

So, the short version of my question is this: Can anyone give me some insight on why many EQ2 players prefer large amounts of wasted gamespace cluttered with 'useless' information that is otherwise displayed on one-touch hotkeyed screens that don't permanently obscure your view?

Am I missing some crucial bit of understanding about Everquest that makes me wonder such things?