I heard a little while ago that SteelSeries, makers of fine gaming mice and mouse peripherals, were planning on making a Blizzard approved World of Warcraft gaming mouse. Well, the SteelSeries WoW MMO Gaming Mouse is here and available for pre-order, and can be yours at some indetermined release date for the price of $99.99.

That’s not terribly much to pay for a gaming mouse if you’re used to paying a premium for gaming peripherals, and especially not terribly much more than other gaming mice if you’re used to SteelSeries’ pricing model and if you’ve paid for Blizzard-branded gear before (remember the Dell World of Warcraft branded laptop?).

The mouse itself touts the ability to create up to 160 character macros that can be toggled using only the mouse, a total of 15 programmable buttons on the mouse, and glowing lights that shine out from angular slots on the front of the mouse like the thing’s shielding your vision from something radioactive. The lighting itself can be customized for brightness and intensity, the colors can be tweaked – hell, SteelSeries claims you can customize just the lighting in 16 million ways, with 3 illumination levels. You can even turn on effects that make the lights pulse slowly while the mouse is plugged in and on.

Engadget took the SteelSeries WoW Mouse for a spin and thought it was pretty good all things told. The programmable buttons and macro capabilities are Windows-only, so Mac users playing WoW are a little out in the cold this time around, but SteelSeries claims they’re working on a solution for the Mac users.

The problem however popped up when I read an interesting post over at the venerable WoW Insider today that explained that the programmable macros and scripting functionality for the mouse are very clearly against Blizzard’s EULA and TOS for World of Warcraft.

This is a pretty serious problem, and reminds me (as it does the poster at WoW Insider) of the trouble that turned up with the Logitech G15 gaming keyboard when it was released; owners of G15 keyboards found themselves getting their accounts locked and banned just for using the scripting and macro functionality that came with their device.

The difference here is that the SteelSeries WoW Mouse is actually Blizzard supported and World of Warcraft branded – that implies that Blizzard is being contradictory with regard to its stand on macros and scripts; although it’s likely a case of development talking with one hand and marketing talking with another. The marketing folks who agreed to the partnership with SteelSeries probably didn’t even bother to consider whether the functionality of the device would be a problem for operations and development, and that unfortunately leaves the poor folks in ops and customer service with nothing to do but repeat the rules and tow the company line.

In any event, if you plan to pick up the SteelSeries WoW Mouse, take heed of the negative reviews that WoW Insider received as well as the positive endorsement from Engadget – I can’t speak to the DPI of the mouse itself because none of its literature (and the Engadget review unfortunately) all leave that information off of their descriptions, but if I were looking for a sharp looking new mouse, this one would be pretty tempting, even at just under a hundred bucks. If you do pick it up though, keep an eye on those macros until SteelSeries and Blizzard get things sorted out.

Now the fine folks at WoWhead have released something I’ve been dying for for a long time now, an easy way to compare two items that isn’t somewhat busted like Blizzard’s own “Find an Upgrade” feature on the Armory is. WoWhead’s Item Comparison Tool allows you to distinctly compare two items, multiple items, or even item sets against one another to see which is superior in the areas that matter to you.

See above? That’s where I’m comparing the Season 2 hunter PVP set against the Tier 4 hunter PvE set to see the differences. The tool couldn’t be easier to use – simply click to add an item and type in the name of the item or the item set to add it to the tool and get instant results. Never again will you have to go wondering if a specific item is an upgrade or not…unless that is, unless you’re in-game and have to make a snap decision once it’s dropped. Roll on it and decide later, I say! It’d be cool though if a tool like this came in the form of an add-on (are you listening, add-on developers?)!

Thanks much to one of my favorite WoW bloggers, Big Red Kitty for breaking the story!

Here it is………
Deadly Wedge Axe

I have previously posted about a compromise between one/three screen(s) and two screens. This was done before I started raiding and discovered the amount of data on-screen that’s part of the UI rather than the 3D world. So, I’ve put together a little guide on how you can use a dual-head system to, basically, move your CT_RaidAssist and chat windows out of the way.

After my first raid I thought I’d just quickly put together a guide on how you can use a dual-head video card in WoW to give you more space for UI elements, such as CT_RaidAssist, while not putting your character on the join of the two screens.

First, plug in a second monitor and configure your system to display in horizontal spanned mode. This means that Windows sees one desktop. You can see that the task bar is stretched across the entire width of all the screens.

It may be possible to get WoW to run in widescreen mode without this step, but probably not. Heck, when I did it the first time I had the screens around the other way (that’s just how I happened to plug them in) and WoW wouldn’t give me a 2048×1024 option until I had them specifically in this order. I don’t have an ATI card in the house, but I hope the options are much the same.

Now, the major players when it comes to configuring WoW are:

• CT Viewport
• MoveAnything (Redux)

We start by logging in:

Ignore the HUD for the moment, that goes away later.

Now, the screenshot looks nice, but the break between screens is in the middle. That sucks. So we type /viewport and we get:

We take the left hand side of the yellow box and drag it as far to the right as possible. It stops at the half way point.

(Unfortunately this still leaves a single line of 3D rendered image on the left hand screen, which may adversely affect frame rate, depending on your hardware.)

I didn’t take a screen shot between closing this window and opening the next, sorry. Just before this next shot was taken I typed /move

That’s the interface for MoveAnything on top of our reconfigured viewport. Start checking off the Move boxes of anything you want to move…

Some things are connected. You don’t have to move party member pets separately, they come with the players. Ignore the fact that the main bar has gone missing, I had a UI error. (At this point I relogged, turning off the HUD.)

And once we’ve moved everything we want to, we’re finished:

You can see the default location of the top-right CTRA party members. I don’t use my dual-head for raids, so I just quickly took a shot with a couple of guildies. CTRA can be enlarged, I just haven’t played with those options yet. What I have done is maxxed out the size of the chat window and picked the largest font size available. I find this helps in raids with a lot of typed instructions.

So, there you have it. Dual-head won’t give you surround gaming like Triple-head will, but you *can* use it for extra UI space. And because there’s a clear break in function from one screen to another, you don’t *have* to match them exactly. You will need to use the same resolution (or at least have the same vertical pixel count), but you can, for example, pair a 17″ screen up with your main 19″ display.

I’ve had my TH2G for a little over three weeks now. I’ve been using it heavily, and Matrox have released a couple of updates, so it’s time for a follow up.

First up, I commented that the quality of the image was such that 3D gaming was fine, but serious work was not. I had two problems, squiggly vertical lines and the horizontal width of the picture was not enough to go across the whole screen, causing vertical bands of fuzzy text on LCD monitors. The former was address with software that was bundled with the TH2G (remember, I didn’t install any at first). The latter was address more recently with a patch you can request. The picture is now work-friendly.

Using WoW, however, with the default layout on a triple-head system is a little neck-unfriendly. This can be fixed using MoveAnything — I’ve dragged all the important combat-related data to the center screen. You can see the new layout in the image I’m about to post in my next entry.

The Chain of the Scarlet Crusade set is finally mine, complete with Herod’s Shoulder, Aegis of the Scarlet Commander, and a nifty piece I wasn’t aware of, the Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade, apparently just reintroduced in 1.11 (it drops off of the crazy trainee zerg that comes after you kill Herod).

I’ve been working on this set since my very early 30s, and finally at level 39 it’s all done (just in time for plate, sigh). I’ll probably keep this one in the bank for special occasions (much like I’ve kept the Defias set for sentimental reasons on my 60 hunter), or maybe just because it’s a reminder that I never have to go to Scarlet Monestary again.

Well, we’ll see about that.

Mucho thanks to guildies Cynix and Fors for your help with the ever-elusive leggings, you uber SM-terrorizing fiends, you.

I’ve had my TripleHead2Go adapter for a couple of days now, so it’s about time I wrote a first impressions review…

What I did:

• Unpacked it, plugged it in, turned it on.

What I didn’t do:

• Read any instructions.
• Install any software.

The TripleHead2Go is a little black box that you plug into your video card’s analogue VGA port, then you plug three (analogue) monitors into it. The box tells your computer that you have a 3840×1024 monitor, so that resolution pops up as an option. The video card in the PC I’ve tested so far is Gigabyte’s original 3D1, which is basically a pair of 6600GTs in SLI mode.

Games:

• World of Warcraft: No problems I can pin down on the card. I had to install 1.11 at the same time, so I think the repeatable crash when I use the quest helper function is a bug, nothing to do with the widescreen mode as such. I had to lower a number of graphics options to keep the frame rate up, as I had previously been running with everything maxxed — but without AA. (Anti-Aliasing has been turning itself off randomly anyway, so I turned it off officially a little while back.)
• Second Life: Not technically a game, but still 3D. It crashes if you try to start it up with any hint that it will be running at 3840×1024. If you start normally in an 800×600 window then maximise it, it’s fine.
• City of Villains: At first only the bottom quarter of the area would render properly. After playing with a rendering scaling option it suddenly started working and has been fine since. Full-screen non-3D stuff is brutally stretched, but still usable. The UI overlay elements are fine.

There is a noticable loss in quality overall. My left and right screens have problems auto-adjusting and I can’t get a perfect pixel-for-pixel match on them. Also, there’s a bit of wiggle on the right screen. Areas of alternating black and white cause vertical lines to distort by the time they get all the way to the right hand side of the screen. This product is not suitable for a work environment, unless your work environment is a 3D world. People who’ve gotten used to DVI will hate the visual quality — they should probably wait for the Dual-DVI product that will no doubt come out eventually. Luckily, I have more than one PC at home, so this post, for example, is being done on a little 15″ LCD with a perfect picture. Personally though, I love it. I intend to test it on my PC with a 6200 video card at 3072×768 and if it works, get a second Th2G and three secondhand 15″ LCD panels. Heck, I’m falling in love with triple-head so much I’m thinking of replacing a Geforce 4MX PCI in a low-end PC with a Matrox Parhelia — though the frame rate on that machine is already CPU bound in the cities.

I recommend the TH2G if you’re still using normal old VGA on a video card with a decent amount of grunt. Buy two more monitors and you’re good to go.

For those that aren’t in the know, this hat requires you to get a Friendly status with the Bloodsail Pirates just off Booty Bay, unfortunately the downside of this means that you need to be Hated with Booty Bay and indeed all Goblin Towns. This was achieved by killing no less than 1,010 Booty Bay Bruisers.

This hat must be awesome I hear you thinking to yourself. Sadly not, crappy cloth helm with +25 Stam, it does however give you the ability to summon the Blood Parrot, and hence the only reason why I spent several weeks killing guards.

Following the acquisition of this masterpiece Pirate Hat, I took the wonderful oppurtunity to pimp it out to all in Ironforge for an hour, before ganking some Horde with some fellow Guildies and taking charge of a zeppelin (with myself at the helm of course).

Surely, in the game nothing else exists which is more of a waste of time …

“No, I buy gold. Then I buy things at AH and re-sell for profit.”

Oh. My heart sank a little. I spent +10g, busted my ass off in SM night after night, and you bought gold online? *sigh* But hey, at least I have some decent stuff now…

Phew, anyway. I figured that I’d bring something exciting with my first entry on here, and after finding the loot table for Naxxramas, I thought I’d share it with you all.

Here ya go!

Some of the things that piqued my interest were the pieces of Atiesh, Medivh’s staff, and the new legendary caster weapon (finally!) Not sure if these are confirmed or not, but apparently, depending on which class your caster is, the stats will vary. Also worth noting is the Corrupted Ashbringer. Obviously, to get the Legendary Ashbringer, you’ll have to go through some ridiculous quest, but the epic one’s stats are already pretty damn awesome. Improved chances to hit and crit, plus a built in Crusader enchant? Not bad, even if it is at the cost of 25 stamina.