I’m the kind of guy that becomes immediately skeptical when someone says, “You’ve got to try such-and-such.” So imagine my surprise when I’m at a Las Vegas bachelor party that I have got to try
SteelSeries products.

Over the years, I’ve become a huge fan of MMOs so I decided to put my skepticism to the test by trying the World of Warcraft®: Cataclysm™ MMO Gaming Mouse. Let’s go through my preconceived notions before opening the box so that we can establish a baseline. A long time friend of mine told me that he took his mouse back because it was sluggish in its response time and hard to program; I hate buttons for the sake of buttons on peripherals; and of course “you’ve got to try this.”

Straight off the shelf, the packaging is efficient and allows a would-be buyer to see the actual size of the mouse. Opening the box, you get the mouse, a SteelSeries sticker, a Quick Start Guide and a product catalog. After connecting the mouse, the first step is to download the driver. That’s where my first warning bell went off. Much to my great surprise, however, the 25MB download took less than 10 seconds and was exceptionally easy to install. In my book, SteelSeries passed the first test. Programming the mouse seemed had me a little intimidated when I first installed the mouse. The software outside of World of Warcraft for assigning keys leaves quite a bit to be desired. Once you launch the game and go into the key bindings area, however, the settings are nearly endless. In the weeks that I’ve been using this mouse, I still find myself tweaking the key bindings to get more out of the mouse. Test two: Passed.

“So you’ve got the mouse out of the box and it’s programmed, but how does it feel,” you ask? Good question. Upon first setting hand to mouse, two points hit me. First, how smooth and responsive the mouse felt while going through the normal motions. Secondly, this mouse felt like it had been custom-built for my hand. Sorry, buddy, but your complaint about the mouse being sluggish was way off.

That’s a lot of pros but so far, really not a lot of cons, right? That’s because I really only have two. First off, I said that the mouse felt like it was custom-built for my hand. Now I’m a 6-foot guy with decent- sized hands. If you’re thinking about getting this for your kid or you’ve got smaller hands, make sure you take a good look at the mouse in the store before you pick it up and definitely don’t buy it online unless you’re sure of the return policy. I had my 5’7” wife try the mouse out and her hand wasn’t big enough to comfortably use the buttons . Even in MMOs, size matters.

My second complaint about the World of Warcraft®: Cataclysm™ MMO Gaming Mouse is the color customization and support thereof. The driver software UI makes changing mouse colors very easy, but there is a wide spread issue with XP and Windows 7 that prevents the settings from applying. A quick look at SteelSeries’ support pages says they should have a fix for this issue around October 15, 2010 (it’s now 2011). The best part about this con, is that you can’t see the colors when you’re using the mouse anyway so it’s almost a non-issue.

Overall, the key layout, customization and feel of the World of Warcraft®: Cataclysm™ MMO Gaming Mouse is superb. If you’ve got $100 to spend on a mouse for WoW, it’s definitely a top pick!