Via
Tobold I was directed to
another blog today and read an excellent post about keyboard turning vs. mouse turning (the original article on Tobold's blog was about reflexes needed in WoW's combat for different classes and consequences of the class design, and the comments quickly latched onto an offhand remark that Tobold still uses the keyboard to turn). The blog post on Tales of the Aggronaut basically states that using the slower keyboard turning can very much be a cause for deaths in raids and therefore wipes, and goes on to explain how to master the better mouse turning. Tobold in his blog post (which is not a response to the other post, he just mentions it) goes on how WoW is an RPG and not an FPS, and therefore shouldn't need "twitchy" reflexes.
And that is where I fail to follow Tobold. See, WoW is generally called a MMORPG, which indeed has the letters R, P, and G in the genre. And I must say, yes, indeed, it is at least a G. It also lets you play a role within certain boundaries. But nowhere does it state on the box that you do not need reflexes, and for a very long time now computer roleplaying games try to move away from just copying pen and paper rulesets and instead use the different options that the medium computer provides (I also do not think that accumulating stats via leveling is what makes a game a roleplaying game, as many people think, so no, Diablo is not a roleplaying in my book, but hack'n'slash, but I disgress). Even Baldurs Gate had some semblance of real-time combat by making the original D&D rounds shorter and simply allowing you to (auto-)pause at certain events, like when your turn started etc. In an online game, that is not an option at all, so it more or less has to happen in
real real-time - you cannot make the other players wait while you cannot decide if move A or move B is better now, or they would get bored silly, and not come again to play with you, and ultimately might leave the game, if situations like these happen too often.
Does that mean that the games are twitchy? Not at all. You usually have a second or two to get out of the fire, or cast a reactive heal, or target the mob heading for an overaggroing damage dealer, and time enough to react. Play a FPS and you will see that these are much less forgiving. But giving you some time to get out of the fire or whatever you need to do is just fine, even if you are Argos, stalwart and rightous defender of Stormwind, in your shiny golden armor. Roleplaying a character does not mean that your character does not have to move and say "But alas, this fire be burning hot!" first. Just get yer ass outta there please. Raids and Heroics an be fine for roleplaying, but only if the whole group agrees on the principle that RP > fight mechanics for the given run. If not, then sorry, but play the game. Or don't, if that doesn't float your boat (and yes, I used to be in a small roleplaying-only guild).
And back on the topic of mouse turning - it is not hard to learn, really. A friend of mine who came from Doom and transitioned to Quake back then finished the whole game with keyboard turning, not even realizing there was an option to use the mouse. On our first Quake-based lan party we just collectively wiped the floor with him. Now, he is an even better FPS player than me, simply because he said "whoa, I didn't even know that was possible, lemme try it before next time." And he tried, and lo, he mastered. Especially since there is not much to master. Just use the mouse, and there you go. As others have said, tweak the sensitivity. Play with the key and mouse button bindings. Check if inverting the mouse helps (moving the mouse away from you, is that "look up" or "look down"?). But give up on the whole concept of much improved spatial awareness because you couldn't be bothered to learn it for an hour or three? You miss out on so much that follow...
- click to move: you right click on terrain and your character moves to that location. Doesn't really work if you cannot move the camera around (and camera moving is exactly the same as mouse turning, only a different button pressed)
- instant turning: you look into a different direction that your character is facing, and press the left and right mouse button at the same time. I can't even understand how you want to get away from say Murmur in time if you don't use that. Or rather, now that I am made aware that people actually use the keyboard to turn I am finally able to understand why PUGs wiped there so often...
- looking and running in different directions. Yes, I (the healer) run towards the boss / away from incoming AOE / out of the fire while facing the tank to see if he gets hammered by cool-boss-ability before I see a drop in his health bar. It helps a lot in my spatial awareness if I can control my toon with all possible input devices, and not just one.
Seriously, try it out again. These games are not hard to control. Maybe in many cases even not with keyboard turning. But you miss out on a whole different view of the game world without proper mouse control. And it is not hard to learn. At all.
