Filed under: Hardware

We don't normally do hardware reviews. That's usually the domain of the guys over at our sister site, Engadget. But when Razer broke out the $79.99 Razer Naga last August 19 at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany (along with a glow-in-the-dark mousepad), and previewed it a BlizzCon a few days later, we knew we just had to get our hands on it and take it out for a spin. This was Razer's first mouse aimed squarely at the MMO market, and at World of Warcraft players specifically. It isn't the first mouse that tried to appeal to the huge MMO player base -- Steelseries unleashed a World of Warcraft mouse last year, although some players found some issues with the mouse and the way it interacted with the game. In hindsight, we probably should've done our own review of that product. So when Razer announced that the Naga "wasn't going be just a great MMO mouse (but) the best MMO mouse," we weren't going to let the opportunity slip away.

[Update: Razer's Heathcliff Hatcher aka Razer|Agent responded to some concerns about the Razer Naga and how its keys currently can't be remapped right out of the box without third party applications. Razer|Agent says, "software driver remapping of keys is a standard function for most of Razer products and we do have suitable solutions that we intend to release in the near future for Naga that will enable this feature out of game." This means that the standard 123 and NUM configurations should be remappable through a future update.]

Mike wrote an excellent hands-on report on the Razer Naga when we were at BlizzCon which should give everyone a fair idea of what we're dealing with. Writing a product review for an MMO gaming mouse wasn't going to be a simple task -- one reason there aren't too many full reviews of the Razer Naga is because it takes a bit of commitment to do it. Unlike first person shooters or even real-time strategy games where about an hour or two of gameplay would be enough to give fair impressions of the mouse, properly assessing an MMO gaming mouse needs to be an immersive experience. It requires mapping keys and adapting one's personal playing style to accommodate the hardware.

As I'd mentioned in my gearing series that talked briefly about gaming mice, the features of most modern gaming mice are far beyond what MMOs generally demand. You won't need 5600dpi, insane APM (Actions-Per-Minute) values, or even fancy technologies like Razer's HyperResponse buttons. If there's any indication that Razer is on the right track with the Naga, it's that they've loaded it with buttons. MMO players tend to press a lot of buttons. They also took the extra step of creating (or adapting) an AddOn that allows the mapping of keybindings from inside the game. When the Razer Naga finally arrived at my doorstep after a torturous tussle with an ineffectual DHL, I finally buckled down -- as Razer would say -- to get imba. Let's take a closer look at the Razer Naga after the jump.

It's that time again -- time to give away yet another of these beautiful Creative World of Warcraft wireless gaming headsets to one lucky commenter on this post. Throw a comment in the comments section below, and you could be the person we choose to win a brand new Creative wireless gaming headset (complete with official glowing World of Warcraft insignia) even before it's released in November. Good deal? Our record on these things so far is about 3,000 comments, but surely we can beat that -- tell your friends and guildies to run on over and put their own comments on here, and if they win, you can make them pay you an ingame finder's fee in gold.

As usual, the contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 13 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before Wednesday, October 21st, at midnight eastern, and please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact the winners when we choose them. You may enter only once, and each winner will get a Creative World of Warcraft Wireless Gaming Headset, with a retail value of $150. Please note: winners will not receive the headset until it is released later this year. Click here to read the official contest rules.

As usual, good luck to everyone who enters. And we're only about halfway through our series of contests thus far -- stay tuned every single week up until the headset's release to try and win one for your own.

Here's a neat tip from Amiyuy of the WoW Ladies Livejournal group. Personally, I don't mind the "fog" effect that sometimes pops up in game -- I experienced it most recently while doing OS the other day, though it pops up on the haunted Borean Tundra coast and a few other places ingame as well. But a few people don't get along with it too well; like the drunken blur effect, it can be somewhat overwhelming for those with a weak stomach.

Fortunately, there's a way to turn both of those off -- you just have to dive into the config.wtf file in your World of Warcraft installation's WTF folder (open it up with Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on Mac, though be careful in there, and save a copy before you do it: if you accidentally edit anything else, it could cause problems on your game), add SET ffx "0" to the end of the file, save and close it, and then you shouldn't see that fog effect any more.

Well, Jaina got her upgrade already, and we've heard that other NPCs may be looking a little better very soon. But what about us players? Don't we get a cool, slick new look too? Vaneras has the answer: erm, maybe. As you may have noticed, our armor has been getting updated as we've gone along -- the Tier 10 armor is much clearer and more stylish (well, depending on who you talk to) than the original tier gear that dropped way back when. But as for the actual player models, Vaneras says it's something that Blizzard would like to do, but it's all a matter of time and priority. They'll get around to it, sure, but only when it makes sense for them to spend the time on it.

Which is what we've heard before, really -- J. Allen Brack told us way back that things would be updated bit by bit rather than having a major patch be focused on updating everything you can see on screen. Still, Cataclysm, the expansion that redoes the old world and all of its old models, might be a good time to do exactly this and revamp players' looks as well. We can tell you for sure that the worgen and goblins are going to look very nice (not to mention the draenei and the blood elves, both with more detailed models than the launch races), so maybe it is time that the original races got smoother look of their own.

Time once again to give away one of Creative's World of Warcraft wireless gaming headsets. These things are so new they're not even out yet -- they'll be released to stores in November, but we're giving away one right here today, to one lucky commenter on this post before next Thursday at midnight. Tell us what music genre and/or band you'd like to hear playing music through this thing, and we'll choose one lucky winner to pick up a headset for free.

The contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 13 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before Wednesday, October 14th at midnight eastern, and please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact the winners when we choose them. You may enter only once, and each winner will get a Creative World of Warcraft Wireless Gaming Headset, with a retail value of $150. Click here to read our official contest rules.

Good luck to everyone who enters! And of course, just in case you haven't heard yet, stay tuned, as we've got more of these contests planned every single week until November.

Above is the very first picture of the Creative World of Warcraft wireless headset in action -- it's now past the prototype stage and well into production (you can notice the brighter LEDs on the earcups, as well as more detail around the glyphs and a more final finishing). It's not quite out yet, but you lucky readers get a third chance to win one right here today, by entering a comment on this post before next Wednesday at midnight. We'll choose one winner to win this baby even before they're released to the public -- you'll never miss hearing a trinket proc again.

The contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 13 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before Wednesday, October 7th, at midnight eastern, and please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact the winners when we choose them. You may enter only once, and each winner will get a Creative World of Warcraft Wireless Gaming Headset, with a retail value of $150. Please note: winners will not receive the headset until it is released later this year. Click here to read the official contest rules.

Good luck to everyone who enters! And again, even if you don't walk away with a headset this week, don't worry: we've got lots more chances coming up each and every week to pick up one of these awesome headsets soon to be released from Creative.

New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic, and be sure to visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide for links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's.

WoW Rookie has already answered the first question asked by so many new players when they realize "You know, I think I'd like to have my own characters and my own account -- but will my computer run WoW?" This week, we'll burrow into the next level: "We've been engaged for months now. I'm in love, I'm committed, I'm of legal age (level 80, baby!) and I'm ready to drop some cash. What should I be looking for in a computer system to settle down in?"

If you're not into PvP, you may have missed PvP specialist Zach Yonzon's excellent series this summer on gearing up for PvP. But wait -- this is no in-game gear guide. Surprise! It's a look at the best hardware for running World of Warcraft. Whether you enjoy PvP or PvE content, here's a look at the gear that'll deliver the eye-popping, mind-blowing, mouse-clicking madness you crave for endgame WoW performance.

Welcome to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Allison Robert is your hostess today.

Random article picture is random. Today, we field questions on account transfers, how to keep a Mac cool, why the blood elves are in the Horde, and whether What A Long, Strange Trip will be BoA!

Endless asks...

Regarding the namechange... what about transferring your char from one account to other? Does that remove you from friendlists?

Yep. Moving a character between accounts will remove you from other players' friends lists, and it'll also unguild you. One of our guildies switched his main between his two accounts this past week and we wound up having to reguild him.

We're back again with our second exclusive contest to give away a brand new, hot off the line Creative World of Warcraft wireless gaming headset to one of you lucky readers. This thing is a beauty -- not only is it made by the premiere name in computer audio, Creative, but it's also decked out in World of Warcraft-related goodness, including illuminated earcup "glyphs," styled with Horde or Alliance insignia as you like it (with more to come -- stay tuned for more info about that right here on WoW.com). And you can enter to win one, just by leaving a comment on this post.

The contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 13 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before Thursday, September 30th at midnight eastern, and please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact the winners when we choose them. You may enter only once, and each winner will get a Creative World of Warcraft Wireless Gaming Headset, with a retail value of $150. Click here to read our official contest rules.

Good luck to everyone who enters! And if you don't win this week, stay tuned -- we'll be doing a contest to give away one of these awesome headsets every single week up until the retail release this November.

The long wait is finally over -- World of Warcraft's servers are finally back online in China after they went offline all the way back at the beginning of June, due to a switch between former host The9 and current host NetEase. It took a while for the government to approve the move (and some have even suggested that the delay wasn't completely legit), but things are finally back to business as usual, according to a few sources out of China.

A few more interesting facts have arisen with this news as well: apparently NetEase has spent over a million yuan (about $146,000) per day to keep up and maintain the game and its servers during the past month of closed beta and free play. Of course, that includes customer support and all the other costs.

Even with that price, however, the company is still expected to grow. We haven't heard any population numbers worldwide for WoW since this whole deal began, but you have to think that they lost at least a few players due to all of the problems. Of course, the release of Wrath over there may bring back some players, but even though they were planning to have it out before all of this happened, the switchover has delayed it even further. All they need is more government approval, but as the outage proved, that can sometimes be hard to get.

Creative has announced their brand new World of Warcraft wireless headset, and you lot are the lucky ones -- they've set up a deal with us to give away one of these headsets every single week up until the actual release in November. So here's your first chance -- leave a comment on this post before next Wednesday, September 23, 2009, and we'll be picking one lucky commenter to win the best-looking WoW-related headgear since Warlocks rode single file.

The contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 13 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before Wednesday, September 23rd at midnight eastern, and please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact the winners when we choose them. You may enter only once, and each winner will get a Creative World of Warcraft Wireless Gaming Headset, with a retail value of $150. Please note: winners will not receive the headset until it is released later this year. Click here to read the official contest rules.

Good luck to everybody, and make sure to come back next week -- we'll be giving one of these headsets away every single week all the way up until their release later this year, so you'll have even more chances to win coming up.

Blizzard's mobile authenticator updated recently, and as soon as it did, we started getting tips on the tipline saying there was a major issue. Apparently the update reset the code associated with your authenticator, which meant that if you applied the authenticator update (and had the authenticator connected to your account), there was no way to actually get a code to login to your account. In short, if you apply the mobile authenticator update, you won't be able to log in to your account until you take the authenticator off completely (I'd assume you can then reinstall and reuse the authenticator, though people will probably be a little more trigger-shy about that one). There are instructions for how to do all of this over on the forums.

Of course it's a major issue, and in response, Blizzard has acknowledged the problem and apparently pulled the Authenticator from the App Store. So if (like me) you haven't updated yet, you won't need to worry about it, and hopefully the next version will fix the issue. But yes, if you have updated, you'll need to go through the steps above to remove the app from your iPhone and account, or just call Blizzard customer service at 1-949-955-1382 and they should be able to help you with the issue.

Update: So far we've only heard about problems with the iPhone version, and of course the issue is when you go from the old to the new version. If you use another phone, or have only used the new version, you shouldn't have any issues.

It looks like the long saga of World of Warcraft's transfer of operatorship in China is almost finally over -- NetEase has announced that the closed beta period is done with, and that they're just about ready to open up normal registration and bring the game back to for-pay status. They're still pending government approval there, so they're not quite online and running yet, but they have closed off registration to new players, and will only bring it back online when they're ready to start charging yet again. Of course, their pay scheme there is different from here in the US and EU -- they often charge per hour to play rather than a constant monthly subscription. But however they decide to charge, NetEase seems sure that by the end of the month, things will finally be back to normal in China's version of Azeroth.

Meanwhile, the former operator of the game, The9, has announced that they are extending by a month the option for former players to get refunds for their prepaid game cards. That option was originally planned to end on September 7th, but players of the game who have unused cards will have another 30 days to redeem them back for cash. All of this back-and-forth originally started back in April of this year, but it seems like, five months later, the game might finally be getting back to normal.