Description
New Era — the modern Retail interface, faithfully rebuilt for Classic Era & Hardcore
Stop settling for "close enough." New Era brings the actual modern World of Warcraft
interface to Classic Era and Hardcore — rebuilt panel-by-panel, pixel-for-pixel, from
Blizzard's own retail UI source. Not a theme. Not a re-color. A ground-up reimplementation of
the retail HUD, frames, and quality-of-life systems, running natively on the 1.15.x vanilla
client.
If you main retail and dip into Classic, New Era makes the jump seamless. If you've always
wanted Classic to feel modern without giving up the vanilla ruleset — this is it.
FOR THE BEST EXPERIENCE, PLEASE INSTALL BIGWIGS & QUESTIE; THE ADDON RELIES ON IT FOR QUEST & BOSS DATA.
A Real Edit Mode — that imports your retail layouts
New Era ships a from-scratch reimplementation of retail's Edit Mode, mirroring Blizzard's model — grid snapping, drag handles, per-frame settings dialogs, multiple saved layouts, the works.
And the part nobody else has done: it speaks retail's layout format. Paste in a profile exported from your retail Edit Mode and New Era generates it in Classic — same systems, same settings, same values. Your retail muscle memory comes with you. Prefer a fresh start? Modern and Classic presets, transcribed straight from retail's own profiles, are one click away.
Bags, Bank & Inventory
- Combined "all bags" window with the modern layout, search, and item-quality borders.
- One-click cleanup / sort — a full sort engine for bags and bank.
- Modern Bank frame + a live, reskinned Keyring.
- New-item glow, quest-item & junk overlays, currency tracker, and the modern bag bar.
Adventure Guide (Encounter Journal)
A real, fully-navigable Dungeon & Raid Journal for Classic content:
- Every boss with abilities, loot tables, and drop %.
- Boss portraits and hand-placed boss-skull map pins.
- Instance overviews wired to the world map and dungeon entrances.
Character Panel
- The modern Character frame with advanced stats breakdowns.
- A full Equipment Set Manager — save, name, and swap gear sets.
- Reskinned Inspect and Tabard frames, modern sidebar tabs.
Quests & World Map
- Modern World Map with modern architecture, dungeon entrance pins, and per-zone dungeon maps.
- A retail-style Objective Tracker with POI buttons, super-tracking, quest item buttons, and shift-click quest links in chat.
- Difficulty-coloured quest log, tracking checkboxes, and quest type tags.
Combat HUD
- Unit Frames — Player, Target, Target-of-Target, Pet, and modern Party & Raid frames, with portraits, status, and QoL wiring.
- Modern Cast Bars (player + target), dynamically pinned the retail way.
- Nameplates rebuilt to retail's modern styles (selectable layouts, threat coloring).
- Personal Resource Display HUD.
- Buff / Debuff aura frames with the retail layout.
- Cooldown Manager (Cooldown Viewer) — curated per-class icon viewers + an auto-tracking buff bar.
- Boss ability timeline (skinned over BigWigs) — the modern combat timeline rail, complete with the queued-ability track and adjustable rail length.
- Spell Activation Overlays (proc glows), Level-Up display, and Loss of Control alerts.
- The modern Boss Banner (encounter-kill / loot banner) and Ready Check display.
Action Bars
All the modern bars — main, multi-bars, secondary/stance/pet — with retail art, flyouts, and full
Edit Mode placement.
Spellbook, Professions & Talents
- Modern Spellbook — With a downranking rank flyout (Classic keeps spell
ranks; New Era surfaces them the modern way) and drag-to-action-bar. - Professions book with castable openers, drag-to-bar, and rank bars.
- Reskinned Talents with animated backgrounds.
Social, Group & Economy
- Group Finder (Premade Groups / LFG) rebuilt on Era's live listing API.
- Social (Contacts / Who / Raid), a dedicated Guild panel, and a custom Recent Allies roster.
- A complete Auction House — Buy, Sell, Auctions & Bids, and Favorites.
- Modern Mail, Merchant/Vendor, Gossip, Trainer, Flight Map, Trade, and Guild Registrar / Petition windows.
World Events Calendar
A read-only Calendar with holidays, Darkmoon Faire, STV, Winter Veil, BG weekends, and
raid resets.
Everywhere else
Modern Micro Menu (with the unspent-talent-point alert), Minimap, XP / Reputation bars
(with an "always show text" option), Chat (re-architected to retail's mixin model + Edit Mode),
Tooltips, Durability, Clock/Stopwatch, Macros, Loot & group-loot roll
toasts, Help, readable Item Text, modern zone-change text, reskinned pop-up
dialogs, and a built-in module manager so you can toggle any piece on or off.
Compatibility
- Classic Era & Hardcore only (Interface 1.15.x). Built for the permanent vanilla client —
it cannot load on retail or on seasonal / Anniversary realms; but I'm working on it! - Optional add-ons (auto-detected): BigWigs (powers the boss ability timeline) and
Questie (quest/POI data). Everything else is self-contained.
Getting started
- Install with the CurseForge app (recommended), or unzip into
…\_classic_era_\Interface\AddOns\. - Log in — the modern interface replaces the default UI automatically.
- Type
/ne edit(or Game Menu → Edit Mode) to arrange your layout — or import your
retail one.
New Era is in active development and chases genuine retail parity, not a rough approximation —
expect regular updates as more frames are finished and polished. A few retail systems don't exist
on the vanilla client; where that's true, the frame ships as a clean modern shell that fills in
automatically if the server ever provides the data. Found something that doesn't match retail?
Reports are hugely welcome — precise feedback is exactly how parity gets nailed.





