So we've all been living with the new UI for a while now. Mentally I can convince myself it's an improvement, but I'm not certain how much of an improvement. So I pulled up a screen shot from a year ago and looked at the two interfaces side-by-side. Here are my thoughts...
The Old UI had a small smiley face indicating Mood, a round circle indicating Energy, a bar indicating XP and showed your level. The middle held Magic Rock. On the right of the screen you had the Player Menu (under the avatar icon) and Chat interface. The bottom left corner held your current count. They were all easy to read and neatly out of the field of play.
The Old UI displayed buffs at the top right of the play screen with their name, an icon and a bar counting down. Comings, goings and street wide actions displayed in a semi-transparent black box often obliterating the left side of the play screen.
1) The New UI moved the player menu (and avatar image) from above the chat window on the right to the top left corner.
Pros: An effort was made to package up the various essential counters. Mostly static counters (XP and Level) were hidden beneath the player menu reducing visual clutter.
Cons: The move took away from the playable window space, and added moving graphics increasing processing requirements. The links being above the chat window might have made more sense. Typically I work on the right with the mouse for a chat window, but now have to move to the left to try and access links.
2) The Player Menu avatar icon was 'upgraded'.
Pros: You get to see changing facial expressions.
Cons: You never get to show these facial expressions to people in the world.
Also, the changing facial expressions make it harder to live with certain avatar attributes. The button eyes don't change, the dotted mouth changes very little until your mood is very low. Combine the two and you can be into the 70's before there's a solid visual indication of a mood change. (Personally I'd love for the fancy secondary avatar to disappear entirely in favor of a mood bar paralleling the energy bar next to a button that says Links. Seems like it would cut down on the amount of design required for facial features too.)
3) The semi-transparent coming and goings were removed from the field of play and sent to the Local Activity window.
Pros: It's not in the way anymore.
Cons: None coming to mind.
4) The buff indicators were turned into very small circles, sometimes with very very small icons and moved to the top left of the field of play.
Pros: It takes up far less space when you have multiple buffs working, or a persistent buff like Gift of Gab.
Cons: The new indicators are hard to see, read and live with. If I've got Gift of Gab, Yellow Essence, Meditation Cool-Down, a drink buff to boost my mood, plus a grinding drink working... the information available at a glance is minimal.
Formerly, black text over a light colored bar made the information easy to see. The print is now tiny and the increased transparency makes seeing the buffs difficult if the overall background is dark. Changing your zoom (game or resident browser) doesn't help.
5) The currant indicator was moved from the bottom of the screen. It was made bigger, semi-transparent and placed into the field of play.
Pros: It's a little bigger and allows for ever so slightly more space to see your inventory row.
Cons: The present location interferes with play and can be extremely difficult to see against certain backgrounds. It also looks awkward and out of place just kinda floating there in space.
6) The numbers for Currants, Enegry, Mood and iMG now scroll through a count.
Pros: None come to mind.
Cons: The move adds visual clutter, the scrolling/counting takes time and contributes to visual lag. The change appears to be purely decorative while managing to be cumbersome to the player.
I haven't mentioned Magic Rock, because I'm not certain how I feel about it. Magic Rock serves an entirely different purpose now. Nor have I mentioned the iMG button, because it was not an element of the Old UI. Certainly there must have been other changes, but they've neither added nor removed enough functionality for me to notice.
So there it is, a simple comparison open for general discussion. Overall I'd call it a partial success... two steps forward, one step back.