razer-naga
Latest
Razer unleashes epic version of the Naga gaming mouse
Barely a week after the announcement of visually-upgraded special editions of its MMO gaming mouse, the folks at Razer did themselves one better to reveal an even bigger upgrade with the Razer Naga Epic. Razer's new version of the popular 17-button mouse sports a dual-mode wired or wireless functionality similar to its first wireless gaming mouse, the Razer Mamba. In addition, the Razer Naga Epic also has interchangeable side panels to accommodate different hand sizes and grip styles; the current Razer Naga has a somewhat bulky, if ergonomic, form factor that may not appeal to players with smaller hands or use the claw grip to play. The three different side panels should broaden players' options in customizing their mice to better suit their playstyle. The Razer Naga Epic's dual-mode functionality allows the mouse to be used wirelessly or with a braided mouse cord that charges the mouse during gameplay. It also comes with a charging dock for charging the mouse during downtime. The Razer Naga Epic is aimed at all MMO gamers, with support for various MMOs such as Warhammer Online and City of Heroes, but there's no question that the mouse is targeted squarely at World of Warcraft players, with its epic nomenclature and purple glow (the regular Naga only glows blue) that can actually be configured to cycle through a possible 16 million color combinations. Razer also promises in-game addons for better interface customization, although at this time, the RazerNaga addon is only at 1.2.2, which hasn't been updated for Patch 4.0.1. The Razer Naga Epic is available for pre-order at the Razer store and slated to ship by the end of November, retailing for an equally epic $129.99.
Razer unveils special edition Naga MMO gaming mice
How do you improve on awesome? That's a tough question, but the clever folks at Razer seem to have come up with an answer: Add some molten lava or a raging maelstrom. The gaming peripherals manufacturer announced today the Razer Naga Molten and Razer Naga Maelstrom special edition mice. Both mice sport the same specs as the original 17-button Razer Naga plus the addition of new, pulsating designs -- a swirling, cool blue maelstrom or glowing hot lava. If the themes seem familiar, it's probably no coincidence that these mice arrive just in time for Cataclysm, which is set to launch on Dec. 7. The Razer Naga is designed specifically for MMO gaming, with a special addon for World of Warcraft, allowing players to bind their spells and abilities to the mouse's numerous buttons. The mouse also supports key mapping, the way most full-featured gaming mice can be configured, and also comes with drivers for the Mac. The new designs take the place of the current pulsating Razer logo on the palm end of the mouse, adding a different level of cool to the popular mouse. Either version of the special edition Razer Naga gaming mouse will retail for $79.99 -- about the same price as the regular version -- and will become available for pre-order on Oct. 12.
Rescheduled developer question-and-answer contest for City of Heroes
You may recall that a couple of days ago we announced a rather tantalizing deal for City of Heroes players, involving both a chance to win a free gaming mouse and the opportunity to ask the developers your questions. Unfortunately, due to technical limitations, the session was postponed, as the team found the formspring service didn't quite have the capacity for what they were doing. We're happy to say that after a very short turnaround time, the session has been re-arranged and put back on the schedule. Answers will still be forthcoming on the 30th of June, but participants will need to directly email the team their questions and all pertinent contest details, rather than using a third-party site. The official rules and regulations have been slightly changed as well, but what hasn't changed is that it's an excellent opportunity for City of Heroes players to get in touch with the developers and potentially get rewarded for it. If you're a fan of Paragon Studios, take a look at the rules and then figure out your best possible question.
City of Heroes hosting Razer-sponsored question-and-answer service [Updated]
[Update: We were just informed by NCsoft that this contest will unfortunately need to be postponed, due to some technical issues. Please ignore the dates posted here. We will let you know as soon as we hear something new.] There's nothing quite as nice as getting rewarded for doing something you would have been inclined to do anyway. City of Heroes is offering players and fans a chance to do precisely that via an upcoming question-and-answer session. Not only do you get a chance to ask the developers whatever you want, but there's a chance for you to win a free Razer Naga mouse, which is designed specifically around MMO gaming. What could be better? Mirroring the earlier formspring session from April, the City of Heroes team is opening up submissions for questions between June 21st and June 28th. The answers are coming on the 30th, with three lucky players winning a Naga mouse. The full rules and regulations can be found on the official site, which includes language explaining that questions will only be answered regarding Going Rogue, the upcoming Super Booster, and the recent video documentary. Take a look at the official rules, and think of what you can ask the team about the upcoming content.
Mac drivers to be available for all Razer mice
World of Warcraft players using a Mac should be pleased to hear that gaming peripherals manufacturer Razer pledged their commitment to supporting the Mac gaming community at the Game Developers Conference. They announced that all upcoming Razer products will come with Mac driver support, including the Razer StarCraft 2 peripheral suite scheduled for release later this year. Prior to the Razer DeathAdder Mac Edition in 2008, all Razer mice and peripherals only had native Windows support and drivers. While these products would generally work with a Mac through its plug-and-play technology, customizing them was more difficult and in some cases, impossible. In order to configure my Razer Lachesis to make all its buttons usable on my Mac, I had to configure it on a PC and mapped some of the buttons as little used keyboard keys because the Mac wouldn't recognize click-throughs from more than a few mouse buttons. This situation improved with the release of the Razer Naga, which shipped with native Mac support, although the key-mapping functionality for the Mac came several weeks after the PC version. Currently, newer mice come with basic Mac support, although Razer promises the same functionality and customizability as their PC counterparts through future updates. Razer also promises to release Mac drivers for all existing products, which presumably includes their line of headsets and keyboards. While Mac gamers have always been treated as second class citizens by most peripheral manufacturers, it's encouraging to see a major player pay the community some attention. I mean, the Magic Mouse is awesome and all, but there's nothing like having a real gaming mouse to play WoW.
Razer Naga now supports key mapping
As previously mentioned in our lengthy review of the Razer Naga, Razer had plans to update their 17-button MMOG-centric mouse to enable key mapping. Heathcliff Hatcher from Razer responded to concerns about the mouse's configurability back then that "software driver remapping of keys is a standard function for most of Razer products and we do have suitable solutions that we intend to release in the near future for Naga that will enable this feature out of game." Razer delivered on that promise with an update to the mouse driver, allowing users to configure all 17 buttons. This addresses the reservations many players expressed when the product launched in August last year. The driver update also supports different profiles, allowing users to configure different key functions according to their current application. Razer has also added full macro capability including timed delays between keystrokes. However, it should be noted that taking advantage of this last function might violate the World of Warcraft's terms of use, something that plagued the first versions of Steelseries' World of Warcraft mouse. Read the FAQ regarding the driver update after the break.
WoW 5th Anniversary Giveaway: 5 Razer Naga gaming mice
WoW.com continues to celebrate all that is wonderful and majestic about World of Warcraft's 5 year anniversary by giving away more stuff! This time it's the ultrasleek Naga gaming mouse from Razer. This bad boy has 17 programmable buttons, it's own AddOn program and a hotness that can't be denied. We've written a full hands-on review of this product last month. And now we're giving away 5 of these little beauties. Here's how can enter for a chance to win. The contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 18 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before Wednesday, November 25th, at 12p ET (noon), and please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact you should you be one of the winners. You may enter only once and five winners will be selected randomly. Each winner will receive 1 Razer Naga MMOG Laser Gaming Mouse with a retail value of US$80. Click here to read the official contest rules. If you don't qualify for this contest, be sure to enter today's Loot card giveaway and look for more WoW.com giveaways tomorrow! EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks so much for participating!
Razer giving away Nagas and WoW steins on Facebook
Peripherals manufacturer Razer has partnered with Taverncraft to give away a Razer Naga MMO gaming mouse and a Charge of the Great Dragonflights World of Warcraft stein to two lucky fans on Facebook. Those interested to participate in the contest must have a Facebook account and become a fan of the Razer page in order to submit an entry. Razer lists three simple steps in order to join: Select your preferred beverage of choice while you game Select your game of choice (presumably World of Warcraft) Take a picture of you owning it up while holding said beverage Deadline for submission of entries is on November 17, with a limit of one entry per person. The Charge of the Great Dragonflights stein, which debuted at BlizzCon last August, retails for $89.99 and features artwork from artist James Zhang on fine-grain stoneware with a solid pewter lid. The Razer Naga also appeared at BlizzCon and retails for $79.99. WoW.com did a full review of the 17-button mouse aimed specifically at MMOG players back in October.
Gearing up for WoW: The Razer Naga [Updated]
We don't normally do hardware reviews. That's usually the domain of the guys over at our sister site, Engadget. But when Razer broke out the $79.99 Razer Naga last August 19 at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany (along with a glow-in-the-dark mousepad), and previewed it a BlizzCon a few days later, we knew we just had to get our hands on it and take it out for a spin. This was Razer's first mouse aimed squarely at the MMO market, and at World of Warcraft players specifically. It isn't the first mouse that tried to appeal to the huge MMO player base -- Steelseries unleashed a World of Warcraft mouse last year, although some players found some issues with the mouse and the way it interacted with the game. In hindsight, we probably should've done our own review of that product. So when Razer announced that the Naga "wasn't going be just a great MMO mouse (but) the best MMO mouse," we weren't going to let the opportunity slip away.[Update: Razer's Heathcliff Hatcher aka Razer|Agent responded to some concerns about the Razer Naga and how its keys currently can't be remapped right out of the box without third party applications. Razer|Agent says, "software driver remapping of keys is a standard function for most of Razer products and we do have suitable solutions that we intend to release in the near future for Naga that will enable this feature out of game." This means that the standard 123 and NUM configurations should be remappable through a future update.]Mike wrote an excellent hands-on report on the Razer Naga when we were at BlizzCon which should give everyone a fair idea of what we're dealing with. Writing a product review for an MMO gaming mouse wasn't going to be a simple task -- one reason there aren't too many full reviews of the Razer Naga is because it takes a bit of commitment to do it. Unlike first person shooters or even real-time strategy games where about an hour or two of gameplay would be enough to give fair impressions of the mouse, properly assessing an MMO gaming mouse needs to be an immersive experience. It requires mapping keys and adapting one's personal playing style to accommodate the hardware.As I'd mentioned in my gearing series that talked briefly about gaming mice, the features of most modern gaming mice are far beyond what MMOs generally demand. You won't need 5600dpi, insane APM (Actions-Per-Minute) values, or even fancy technologies like Razer's HyperResponse buttons. If there's any indication that Razer is on the right track with the Naga, it's that they've loaded it with buttons. MMO players tend to press a lot of buttons. They also took the extra step of creating (or adapting) an AddOn that allows the mapping of keybindings from inside the game. When the Razer Naga finally arrived at my doorstep after a torturous tussle with an ineffectual DHL, I finally buckled down -- as Razer would say -- to get imba. Let's take a closer look at the Razer Naga after the jump. %Gallery-75456%
Enter to win a Razer Naga and Megasoma mouse mat
Most mice these days have maybe one or two stylish buttons for you to press during gameplay. Razer's Naga mouse has a few more than that -- in addition to the usual wheel and right and left buttons, it has an extra 12 button thumbpad for you to bind to whatever you want (with the help of a special WoW addon -- we talked about it in our hands-on from BlizzCon a while back). It's usually $80 and, as of this writing, is actually on back order, but since you readers are so nice to come here and read our posts every day, we're giving one of you one for free.That's right -- to enter, just comment on this post, and tell us what you'd bind the "5" button to (that's the one right in the middle, as you can see above) before this Saturday night at 11:59pm. You can enter only once, and one winner will be picked in a random drawing to win both a Razer Naga mouse (MSRP $80), as well as a Razer Megasoma mouse mat to push it around on (MSRP $50). You must be 18 or older to win, as well as a resident of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec). Click here for the complete official rules.Good luck to everyone who enters!
Razer Naga MMO mouse (and Megasoma mat) unboxing and hands-on
Razer's got a knack for cranking out the unusual, and from the First Edition Boomslang, the outfit has also had a thing for developing gaming mice that demanded respect. The recently announced Naga (which is now shipping out to customers, by the way) is one of the most bizarre mice yet, boasting no fewer than 12 buttons on the left side and a promise of making your MMO gaming a more enjoyable experience. Alongside the wired USB critter, Razer also introduced a patently gigantic gaming surface, the $49.99 Mesasoma. We were able to spend some time with each of these peripherals, so hop on down to the gallery for a closer look and on past the break for a few impressions. %Gallery-73385%
