SteelSeries World of Warcraft Mouse equipped for hands-on impressions, +14 agility
By Paul Miller 
posted January 22nd 2009 2:16PM
posted January 22nd 2009 2:16PM
We finally got our hands on SteelSeries' World of Warcraft MMO Gaming Mouse, and took the thing for a little spin across Azeroth. After hiring a rogue to open the complicated packaging and marveling at the mouse's incomprehensible runes, we hooked up the mouse over USB and were treated to the ambient light show. The "cracks" across the back of the mouse glow with subtle colors, though we wish they could light up a bit more dramatically and actually convey game status info -- but we're boring like that. Compared to most mice, the WoW mouse is rather large and "hand supporting," leaving behind the typical friction and frame of reference that a trailing hand and wrist usually supply. It's nice and comfortable, but there's a bit of a trade off, though overall we found the mouse to be incredibly "right" in responsiveness and accuracy. More impressions after the break.
The real draw here, of course, is the 15 individually programmable buttons, which can be assigned to up to 160 interchangeable macros with the downloadable Windows-only software. SteelSeries claims to be "working with Blizzard on the development strategy for a Mac solution" which sounds like they've got a whole lot of nothing ready for the Mac-inclined. Right now they recommend setting up the mouse with the third party ControllerMate software.
That's a shame, because the software is the real strength here. You can set up 10 different profiles for your various alts, play styles and situations, with buttons set to dismount, auto target, target self, toggle bags... you get the picture. Unfortunately, with all that complexity comes a bit of a learning curve. It took our WoW-addled intern two hours of running Heroic Nexus to get used to using all the buttons, and he found that even then he was mainly just using two of the macros, with the rest being forgotten more often than not. A heavy macro user could probably use the mouse all by its lonesome and rid their reliance on a keyboard, but that would take a certain amount of skill and determination. The real strength here is Battlegrounds and raids, but it's clear the mouse isn't really about making WoW more accessible or "easy," rather about enabling power users to kick even more ass. The mouse is available now for $99.
I just bought this mouse yesterday. I had a naxx20 raid last night(for the achievement) I couldn't figure out the button setup until about 2 hours after the raid at about 2am. I had used Clique to heal and I was trying to figure out how to program the mouseover for the new mouse's buttons.
Solution was the take a bar I wasn't using(Bar 2) and setup macros in the game with my mouseover command and the spell name, then tracked down the button assignments in the Mouse GUI(Secondary Action 2) i think. Do not try to set the macros up directly from the Mouse GUI as it will want to type out your macros in your chat frame in game before it actually starts the cast.
I didn't get a chance to complete my setup last night, and hope to finish tonight. From my first impression if you don't want to use macros this probably isn't going to be a fun setup for folks. It seems as if Blizzard has found a better way for gamers to utilize the macro feature through this mouse.