Mar
1
2011
My Love/Hate Relationship With the Nostromo N52
I have a Nostromo n52 gaming pad for use with World of Warcraft, and I both love it and hate it. Here’s why:
Love
- Macros. You can program it to do all sorts of macros that the WoW UI won’t let you.
- Convenient movement. This is really the biggest thing for me. I can use my thumb to do all of my movement, instead of the standard — which is three fingers on WASD, which switch away from movement to press other buttons.
- Comfort. It has a great ergonomic design (whoa, buzzword from the 90s), that just feels really comfortable.
- Design. It just looks cool… though not nearly as cool as the n52te (tournament edition). The astute may notice that the n52te is essentially the same as the n52, with some pretty lights added — they found the right formula, and they stuck with it. Though some have issues with the software for that model, saying that the original is better.
Hate
- Reliance. I feel like I rely on it now; without it I can’t really play effectively. This isn’t a huge deal, but if I’m on someone else’s computer, it takes a while to get reacquainted with the keyboard.
- Chatting. It’s very hard to switch between playing and typing, and because I’m a lazy bastard this means I usually just don’t chat because it’s too much effort. Which is extra bad since I already tend to get focused on the game and not pay attention to messages, so I feel like I’m doubly ignoring friends and guild-mates.
I don’t know if these weren’t popular enough, or people started moving to mouse-based solutions (Razer, WoW mouse), or what, but there has only been the one update to this several years ago, and nothing further. Which is disappointing — my perfectly functional gadget is old, so I need to replace it with something betternewer, damnit! Ah well, maybe I’ll try out a Razer. Or… just stick with what I’ve got since I rarely play WoW anyway.