Sure, but there comes a point when you have to ask if Blizzards default UI is fit for purpose.
- How many healers are out there that don't use something like Grid?
- How many warlocks out there don't play without something like Dotimer?
- How many hunters don't use something like Feed-o-matic instead of managing their pet like some absurd tamogotchi?
- How many players regularly use the Auction House without something like Auctioneer?
- How many altoholics run around trying to remember what tradecraft recipes each of their alts know instead of using RecipeBook or similar?
- Ad infinitum...
There's a point to all these mods. They fill gaps in the default UI. Gaps which in all honesty Blizzard should have filled 4 years ago. Auctioneer is a perfect example. Norganna suggested Blizzard add some auction statistics to the default UI. Blizzard did nothing. Norganna, sick of waiting, built Auctioneer. How granny unfriendly would it be for Blizzard to suggest market values of items based on the last, say 20 sales? Do they? No. But, I digress.
Surely it's inherently less complex if Blizzard actually incorporate features people need, with the flexibility they want, than players having to source mods, work out how to install them, work out how to configure them.. only for WoW to lose data when Blizzard's own anti-datamining system misfires because you try to loot the same item twice while lagging... And it's certainly preferable to granny playing in an arthritic default UI.
Let's be honest, the last 4 years have not treated the default UI kindly. It looks (aesthetically speaking) very dated, especially on large widescreen monitors.
Besides, who says a pretty and functional UI has to be inherently user unfriendly? Most mods work with little or no tweaking. E.g. For all of the complexity of Carbonite, it's perfectly usable in its default configuration.
Any in-house UI team could (and probably would) aim to hide most of the options from casual players by tucking them away in an Advanced Options tab or two... in much the same way most games hide advance graphics settings from you gran
