SteelSeries Limited-Edition Zboard Keyset Wrath of the Lich King

6 comments on “SteelSeries Limited-Edition Zboard Keyset Wrath of the Lich King”

1. 22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Good product, but misleading Amazon description., January 12, 2009

   By 

   Gerry Strafford (Portland, Oregon, USA) –
   
     

   This review is from: SteelSeries Limited-Edition Zboard Keyset Wrath of the Lich King (Electronics)

   Let me first say that I agree with Carlee, having reviewed the description for this item if you were not already aware of how the ZBoard works, this is misleading. This product is merely a “keyset” for the ZBoard. The ZBoard base has all the wires and connectors to your computer, and your keysets can be lifted out and changed on a game-by-game basis (or the regular keyset layout included with the base.) They make quite a few variations of the keysets for different games.

   That being said, and having been a ZBoard user for some time, I greatly enjoy the layout and functionality of this keyset. I have often found myself at a loss when returning to regular keyboards at friends houses since I am so used to the (vastly improved) layout offered on my ZBoard.

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2. 12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Keyset, February 2, 2009

   By 

   Bobby P “Beauf” (Wisconsin USA) –

   This review is from: SteelSeries Limited-Edition Zboard Keyset Wrath of the Lich King (Electronics)

   This is only a keyset and not the actual Zboard. I did end up purchasing the Zboard after reading reviews that this was only the keyset. When I purchased this item, I had thought that it was not only the keyset, but the Zboard as well. A misunderstanding when I read the description. I do enjoy the keyset now that I have the Zboard. It took a little bit to get use too, but it is a good item. Those that read this review must remember that it is ONLY the keyset, so you still would have to purchase the Zboard.

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3. 16 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Misleading description of product that took forever to be delivered, January 14, 2009

   By 

   D. Moring –
   
     

   This review is from: SteelSeries Limited-Edition Zboard Keyset Wrath of the Lich King (Electronics)

   This product requires a Zboard for use. The product on Amazon.com states this nowhere. While it does show that buyers frequently buy a Zboard, if you are unfamiliar with Zboards you most likely would not realize this. I ordered this product at the beginning of December as a Christmas present, and it didn’t arrive until two weeks after its original estimated delivery date, which was long after Christmas. I was ok with the delay until I opened the package to find it wasn’t what I thought it was. I have no idea how good the product is, because I can’t use it. Maybe I should have just bought it directly from WOW. This was a disapointing performance on Amazon’s part.

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4. 117 of 123 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Steelseries Massive-Button Mouse, sure — Warcraft mouse? Just the logo., March 11, 2009

   By 

   Jennifer Leising (Bellevue, WA) –
   
     

   Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)

   This review is from: SteelSeries Special-Edition World of Warcraft Mouse (Electronics)

   

   Customer Video Review 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.
   […]

   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.

   EDIT: April 27, 2010
   I noticed a new button under the main menu->Interface options that mentions “Detect Steelseries WoW Mouse”… it may be that FINALLY, WoW had added the advertised special functionality that was advertised for us a year ago who paid far too much to sit on a ridiculously long waiting list for something that didn’t even work as advertised…. So MAYBE this actually works correctly now. I wouldn’t know – I haven’t used the Steelseries mouse since this review, nor would I (since it’s not comfortable, so perhaps someone with the current WoW patch and this mouse could write an updated review regarding the macro issue.

   However, there are also new mice on the market, like the Razer Naga, that include a LOT of bindable buttons in a much more comfortable form (at least, in my opinion). So do your market research and decide whether you really want to throw money at a company (Steelseries) that has treated its customers to a poor quality mouse with both hardware and software issues, poor ergonomics, and unreliable release dates/pre-order handling.

   I’m likely to buy a Razer Naga in the near future, but in the meanwhile, I’ve already given away my Steelseries mouse to…

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5. 45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Good Specs, awful implementation–Review by an actual WoW player, March 15, 2009

   By 

   Christopher Lazzaro –
   
     

   This review is from: SteelSeries Special-Edition World of Warcraft Mouse (Electronics)

   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…

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6. 23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

   
   avoid this mouse, March 6, 2009

   By 

   A. Garcia –
   
     

   This review is from: SteelSeries Special-Edition World of Warcraft Mouse (Electronics)

   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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