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42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Steelseries Massive-Button Mouse, sure -- Warcraft mouse? Just the logo., March 11, 2009
Length:: 2:12 Mins
I had written a hands-on review on my blog, since (even though I ordered and received this mouse from Amazon), I was unable to review on this mouse since it was incorrectly categorized as "Preorder" for quite some time.
http://www.wemultibox.com/blogs/vyndree/steelseries-world-warcraft-mmo-mouse
First of all, here are the "pros" of the mouse:
* It has a LOT of buttons
* It glows and has shiny colors
* It looks expensive, and has a little WoW logo on the plastic, as well as a WoW-skinned software UI.
Here are the cons:
* It utilizes delays, loops, and timers and ENCOURAGES users to leave the delays on by default. This is against the WoW Terms of Use and can get your account banned. If you manually turn them off and know what you're doing, you'll be fine.
* The "macro system" is just insertion of keys into the keyboard buffer. That means if you want to "stopattack" a mob that just got sheeped or CC'ed, the keys will "collide" with any other keys you're typing at the time (including your "wasd" movement keys) and will type them directly into the in-game chat buffer. (see video) This is the exact same macro functionality as any other macro-capable non-WoW mouse.
* Names with extended ASCII characters are not recognized by the macro software. That means those with extended ASCII or from non-US locales won't be able to utilize the armory feature within the software.
* The software does not come shipped in the box. If you do not have the internet for some ungodly reason and plan on using this mouse on an offline PC game, you are out of luck.
The "not good, not bad" parts:
* The mouse (at least IMHO) is uncomfortable for those with small hands. I am a female gamer with small hands (5'2", 100 lbs) -- extended play sessions are not possible with this mouse since it is designed for a larger hand.
For more details, feel free to visit my blog post review or view the video. I've gotten a few not-so-friendly comments somewhat along the lines of "LOL N00B. Only a dumb girl would fat-finger mouse buttons while they're chatting lolz pwnt!". Of course, since I don't expect every video commenter on youtube to possess an IQ, I'll politely point out that the video is what's called an "example", and that the real-world scenarios (/stopattacking a sheep, /assisting another character, whatnot) would collide with your movement keys (wasd, q and e) providing you with a command much like "/stopatwwwwwack" or "/assqqqqqqissssssst"
As a 15-button mouse, you're not going to find anything like it on the market right now. If you're unconcerned with the built-in macro functionality, feel free to utilize this mouse with single-character keybindings (i.e. "f" as an in-game keybinding for assist instead of "/assist"). However, as the feature-rich designed-for-World-of-Warcraft mouse that was touted with such specially co-designed features, I'm astonished that the macro system is identical to other mice on the market, and that the mouse's user guide would recommend breaking the WoW's terms of use.
It gets 2 stars for misleading advertising, continually pushed preorder dates that continued even after I received my 2-month preorder, and the lack of "designed-for-WoW" functional and non-cosmetic features.
As a 15-button mouse, it gets 3 stars -- I hear it fails at keybinding key combinations (such as CTRL+5 or SHIFT+4), but the multitude of buttons might still be appealing. If steelseries had marketed this mouse as a general gaming mouse, they'd have had none of the problems with false advertising and might've gotten a bigger market since I don't know many MMO gamers who need 15-button mice.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good Specs, awful implementation--Review by an actual WoW player, March 15, 2009
You've probably already read that this mouse is, in general, good for Warcraft players and bad for virtually anyone else. While the mouse has some redeemable stats hardware-wise, DPI, report rate, yadda yadda, all the features that would interest a WoW player are disappointing.
The "Macros" that are build into the mouse cause the text box in the game to come up and the mouse actually types your macro letter by letter into the chat frame. Obviously this makes those macros useless, since you can probably type them faster manually. The other flaw with the macros was that when you build a custom macro and removed the time delay between keyboard inputs the macro was typed too quickly or inaccurately or incompletely to execute.
The mouse is only capable of actuating buttons on your main action bar or main pet bar. So if you have buttons on other bars you need to use a workaround, and map the mouse buttons to keyboard strokes and map your action buttons in game to the same keystrokes. It actually works very well in game, but you need to get past the idea that you're now setting your game up around the limitations of your mouse and that those buttons will still produce the same useless keystroke combos outside of the game. Alt+Shift+Q isn't all that useful outside of WoW now is it?
The software itself was a bit difficult to use, even for a seasoned WoW player. My biggest issue ended up being frustration over setting or resetting the basic mouse button functions we're used to with any other mouse on earth. I remapped the "browser back" button and there was nothing in the documentation to tell me how to get that function back. (Which you find in a drop down menu by right clicking the button in the on screen diagram of the mouse. But I got the feeling that if I remapped the right click button that I'd be uninstalling and reinstalling to get that one back.)
The buttons themselves have shortcomings as well. The ring-finger button is 2 buttons on a rocker that must be pressed with the left side of the ring-finger. This is not a particularly sensitive part of a finger with no acclaim for it's dexterity. Deciphering which of the 2 buttons you might be pressing at a given time was impossible and pushing the button required enough force to cause you to active some of the buttons on the opposite side of the mouse with your thumb. In the end, I ended up mapping both the ring-finger rocker buttons to the same function and gluing a piece of rubber to it so the button could be activated with a more natural motion, like a trigger (using the ring-finger) instead of a scissor motion between the middle and ring fingers, that alleviated the inadvertent activating of the thumb buttons.
The thumb buttons were difficult to use at best. To give you some idea about the size of hand I have, and I'm sorry this is the best I can come up with, when I select a glove size, I go for a large, but never XL, if that's any indication. Or, I could choke someone with about a 19 inch neck. The number 4 thumb button on the rocker was out of reach without using two motions to spin the mouse in my palm a bit the reach for it. It was useless for gaming. The other 3 buttons on the 4-way thumb rocker activated an adjacent button roughly 85% of the times I clicked in game. The workaround I had to use was to disable the number 2 and number 4 buttons all together (The ones closest and furthest from the base of the thumb). The 2 traditional (browser fwd/back) thumb buttons are much further apart, horizontally, than on any mouse I've ever seen, but this isn't a bad thing, it gives a bit of room so your thumb can feel its way between the 2 of them and the 4-way rocker slightly below them.
There are raised buttons on the inner edges of the 2 main, traditional mouse buttons, these are probably the most useful of any of the extra buttons on the mouse. If you have a 2 finger on top style, (left and right click with index and middle fingers, respectively) you might find they are positioned so that you want to use the extra raised buttons for primary and secondary click. They should have been placed further to the outsides of those buttons to keep them out from under finger constantly, but the elevation makes them obvious and after an hour of 2 of gaming I found I could cope with them.
The mousewheel is grippy and the force to active the wheelbutton is fine. You won't be spinning this wheel to navigate large menus or text documents though, as it has no inertia to speak of.
2 more customizable buttons near the mousewheel are safe from accidental clicking and good for DPI-on-the-fly functions but unless you're double jointed you won't be using them for frequent clicks.
The back half of the mouse sits on what amounts to rubber wings. The elevates your hand from the mouse surface. Which is great for keeping your grubby mitts off your pristine mousepad, but for those of us whose little fingers play a stabilizing roll in our gaming the wings are great for making us feel more detached from the mousing experience. I was able to cut a portion of the right wing off with metal shears without altering the glide of the mouse so the little finger could be grounded again.
The last flaw was the surface of the mouse. It's smoothe plastic. Very smoothe. So smoothe in fact that I couldn't keep the mouse in my hand when I had to pick it up off the pad to reposition it. Or I could squeeze really hard and activate any number of buttons. The point is, gamers lift their mice frequently, and this surface is slippery. It seems like there wasn't any thought put into the surface.
The LEDs are useless. She is not going to sleep with you even though your 'mouse is so cute, it looks like it's breathing.' Not only that but your hand will cover them entirely while playing, so no 3rd parties are going to write a useful program for them. What they did manage to accomplish was push the mouse over the power rating my g15 keyboard's USB hub was capable of supporting, even as the only device attached. This meant the cord, at 2 meters, was literally a drawback on a big desk.
All in all, the mouse is clunky to use with WoW, its buttons are poorly positioned, the button rockers are terrible ideas (think: very tiny Sega Genesis controller D-pad when you imagine the thumb rocker), and the mouse is too hard to keep in an average hand. So unless you're a collector or you have a gargantuan hand with bomb technician dexterity and purpose-built gamer callouses you're going to have a lot of heartache with this mouse and accurately pressing its many buttons.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
avoid this mouse, March 6, 2009
I got this mouse and was disapointed that warcraft does not respond to the windows button 4 and 5. The mouse also goes out alot and I have to reset it often. Some of the macros I use in warcraft don't work when I apply them to the mouse. So if you raid or do arena this mouse can cause alot of problems. I reccomend going with another brand and avoiding all the problems associated with this mouse. I already have a new mouse on order.
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