WoW dorkiness

[ysobel]

So when I play WoW, I usually use the keyboard as much as possible, and occasional mousing when necessary (e.g. looting, or talking to NPCs). I have a touchpad mouse, which is kind of crap for things like navigating. The key bindings are set up so that my left hand, which can directly access the keyboard, does a lot of the work, and my right hand, which can access the arrow keys easily but otherwise uses a stick to poke at keys, is mainly navigation.

With my shoulder kind of fucked, I can't really get close enough to reach the keyboard. Mouse, yes, because it's set below the keyboard, but that with my left hand, and my right hand needs the stick even for arrow keys. This is why I'm doing a lot of stuff by voice dictation rather than typing directly.

Yesterday, in a fit of insanity caused by pain, pain meds, and sleep deprivation, I decided to try playing WoW anyway.

It was… interesting, to say the least.

I didn't, of course, try anything serious. I deliberately stayed in lower level zones. But combat is a little absurd by voice dictation: "Tab press 2 press 2 press 2 press 3 (pause to right click and loot)" and navigating is just as bad: "Backspace (which summons my mount; pause to manually hold down space bar) press control up arrow (which turns on auto run) doot doot doot (realize that sound effects while dictating are bad; clumsily steer by poking at their own keys with stick) stop oh crap that doesn't work down arrow down arrow (manually hold down x with stick)"

I was mostly hanging around in Outlands and, though I didn't die, I was still having health dips. I can just imagine the fun of trying to do some of the level 80 areas, or instances, or raids. That it is an inefficient method of play is an understatement.

I also discovered just how much extraneous talking I tend to do while playing, when I'm alone in the house. Talking aloud to various NPCs, or to things I was fighting; sound effects; and general random babble.

On the bright side, I am now Revered with the Oracles…

Comments

[rho]

What you need is to have several different computers all in the same room, all set up with different WoW and voice recognition settings. Then you could say one thing that would make one character run forward, while another character attacked and another character cast buffs. Then, once you'd got the hang of it, you could sit back and narrate your own personal raiding party by voice alone. And then when you got really good, you could make a recording and then play it back in a particularly perverse form of botting.

[azurelunatic]

That is a scary prospect.

[rho]

One does one's best.