Short version: A comfortable mouse whose main gimmick will take hours upon hours of dedication on your part to fully exploit.
Like a dork, I looked up the word “naga” in Wikipedia, and it turns out that it refers to “a deity or class of entity or being, taking the form of a very great snake—specifically the King Cobra, found in Hinduism and Buddhism.” That would explain the snake-like logo of the Razer Naga ($80, available now), a new mouse that’s aimed at people who play MMOs, specifically World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online. The biggest feature: 12 buttons on the left-hand side of the mouse.
Unlike last year’s SteelSeries World of Warcraft Gaming Mouse, the Razer Naga doesn’t come with the full Blizzard licensing. If that matters to you you’re a fool. And also unlike said SteelSeries mouse, the buttons here don’t stick like an old Sega Genesis controller after using it for a few hours.
It works, out of the box, with both Windows (tested on Windows 7) and Mac OS X (tested on Snow Leopard). Thank you, Razer. No need for my fellow Mac users to spring for a third-party driver just to use the mouse!
So let’s do this. I tested the mouse using World of Warcraft over a period of two weeks. That may seem excessive, but this mouse absolutely has a learning curve. The documentation that comes with the mouse—I actually read the instruction manual!—says to expect up to 18 hours to get used to the mouse. Yes, 18 hours. As Doug said in our chatroom, you might as well learn Russian.
The mouse’s raison d’être is the 12 buttons on the left-hand side, where your thumb would normally rest. The 12 buttons are designed to replace any number of keyboard keys that you’d use to play the game. You know, 1 is regular attack, then 2 through whatever for your spells and whatnot.
My latest character, an Affliction Blood Elf Warlock, has the following key-mapping:
1: Shoot
2: Shadow Bolt
3: Immolate
4: Corruption
6: Life Tap
7: Drain Life
9: Drain Soul
0: Rain of Fire
-: Fear
These spells and abilities are mapped over to the 1-12 buttons on the mouse.
Razer has created an AddOn for both games that rearranges your on-screen icons, à la Bartender, to better visually correlate the 12 mouse buttons to your spells and abilities. (Here’s a screenshot of the interface AddOn. It’s the squares on the right-hand side.)
As I said, using the 12 buttons effectively will absolutely take you several hours, especially if you’ve been playing the game for a long time. It’s like trying to write your name with your left hand when you’re a righty.
I had gotten used to running close to a mob, then taking taking my middle finger off the “W” key, then hitting 4, 5, 6, 3, and 1 till the mob died. (See the above key-mapping for what those numbers translate to.) Now all of a sudden your left hand stays on the WASD keys, while your right thumb has to navigate the little button patch on the mouse.
After about of week with the new playing scheme, I had more or less acclimated myself. I now quest with the 12 buttons just fine, but I still find myself going back to the ol’ keyboard when PVPing. I find that the frantic nature of PVP doesn’t really lend itself to the 12 buttons. Practice makes perfect, of course, and you may be more patient than I am, but I couldn’t get used to PVPing with the 12 buttons even after several days.
And to allay a fear I read somewhere, no, I really didn’t find that pushing one of the 12 buttons would cause the mouse to move a great deal, if at all. It’s not as if you need to exact an incredible amount of force on the buttons to get them to click.
So it’s a fine mouse, yes, but you really do need to be prepared to fully re-train yourself on how to play the game.
Is it any better than using the plain on’ keyboard keys? Meh, I wouldn’t say so, and I expect that many of you are already used to your current setup. Still, it’s a fine mouse in its own right, and its use to you is 100 percent dependent on your willingness to learn how to effectively use it.
Informative and concise review. Thumbs up.
I’m an owner. While it may take a few hours to get used to it, that amount of time vs. playtime is minimal.
I like it. It helps.
As with any “gaming” peripheral/device, the main point for me is always this question: “Do the additional keys/buttons/features of the device warrant the cost above and beyond a ‘traditional’ device of the same quality?” For example, is it worth paying $80 for this mouse’s extra 12-key setup compared to the ~$50 cost of a really nice, high quality mouse with only the usual 3 buttons plus a couple of side buttons?
Personally, I’m so completely used to the keyboard + mouse combination that I don’t know if I would even be *willing* to try to retrain myself, let alone pay to do it (especially when it comes to PvP). Add to that the fairly high cost of this mouse and I can’t see myself ever buying one. However, if Santa decided to bring me one, I won’t bat an eye at taking at least *some* time to try it out. 8-)
Very nice review. Especially appreciated is the 2-week perspective. A mouse like this just can’t be reviewed out of the boox.
the mouse looks like it’s going to cause carpal tunnel syndrome. But it’s really cool (for lazy ppl, that is). Can I sell wow gold to buy that?
Its looks really impressive, I wanted to get one after the scroll wheel on my diamondback broke. It was still within warrenty though, just that my dealer claimed that Razer doesn’t manufacture diamondbacks anymore. They offered me a copperhead instead provided that I topped up the price difference between the two mice.
I asked if I could top up the price difference and take the naga instead and they refused. Should I have insisted?
I’ve got it. I just installed the AddOn. And it’s more of a copy of Dominos than Bartender. So far, I do NOT like the AddOn. I like my Bartender. But, I’m having issues getting anything with a modifier to work. I’m going to give the Naga AddOn another day after i get the thing configured.
The main purpose of this mouse is to add spells and abilities to your thumb that you CANT readily use with the keyboard. I play a lvl 80 warlock and to have every single spell mapped to a keypress is somewhat unrealistic. Even if I were to accomplish it, some combinations would be excessively difficult.
In short, its nearly impossible to say that this mouse DOESNT help. Even if you were only to use three of the 12 side buttons, thats still one more side button than any other standard mouse has. Thats a straight-up 50% improvement.
For example, my current side buttons use my panic abilities which I have to be able to use instantly without even so much as moving my mouse to click anything. These are (in pvp, currently) Death Coil and Shadowfury. Having those abilities not mapped to a key/click is almost unthinkable. Shadowfury is such a clutch spell that it turns the tide of 9 out of 10 battles. Without it, a destro warlock can barely win in pvp against any class.
At the same time, I DONT have an extra button with which to use Demonic Teleport (or summon for that matter). In pvp there are SO MANY abilities that warlocks need to have on call. Another good example is that I have healthstone bound to ‘h’. Its doable, but quite a stretch for my smallish hands.
Anyway, in conclusion, I respectfully request that you edit the initial post in accordance with the actual power-gamer intended use of this mouse. Your review is one of the first to come up on google, and may be misleading a lot of people.
Thank you
~Dennis