Sigh and Squee

[feitan]

So I'm on facebook and see a post from the Official Warcraft page. It says the following:

What sage advice would you give to World of Warcraft beginners interested in getting the most out of macros? Do you have any favorites that you can't live without? Are there certain fan sites or online resources that you commonly refer to? Head on over to the

Comments

[riotlounge]

There's a considerable amount of hilarity in the whole "THIS IS CHEATING" when it is something very specifically allowed and dispensed as part of the base game. Same goes for add-ons.

Add-ons and macros, to a large degree, allow me (and others) to be better players because we're not all highly functioning computers with instant reflexes and singular modes of thought. Add-ons parse a large amount of information that is present there in the game but that my brain (for whatever reason) cannot use or detect in a meaningful or relevant manner. Or in a way that allows me to use said information meaningfully.

Same with macros. There's a lot of things I cannot do in a meaningful amount of time or do in a way that's handy without them, and I see no reason why they are "cheating" - the game allows you to use macros in order to do things quickly and capably and isn't that a -good- thing?

[sarah_silence]

I'm curious about your comment about them being obviously written by men. Is it because you think women never teabag in-game, target noobs, think macros are stupid, or talk trash?

Because I assure you, I know of female players who do all those things, and I know male players who don't to any of them. Saying that you're not surprised they were written by men is kind of unfair to the good men out there, no?

[riotlounge]

If she read this on Facebook, she can probably guess that a lot of them were written by men, considering their personal info/name are attached to all their comments.

[sarah_silence]

Yes, but being unsurprised that they were written by men says, to me, that it's the kind of behavior that is expected from men, and not from women. I just think it's kind of unfair to all the guys out there who don't fall into the "a-hole gamer" stereotype.

From my personal experience, I've only run into a handful of people who were outright a-holes in-game, and it wasn't really possible to say they were predominantly one gender. They were pretty fairly mixed. Most notably, there was my old GL, a RL girl who'd been suspended more than once for griefing. Her favorite hobby was to hang out in StV and gank gank gank. Needless to say, she was a big reason I left that guild (and server).

I guess I'm just sayin' that being an a-hole knows no gender, sadly.

[riotlounge]

No, being an asshole knows no gender, but I wouldn't be surprised that douchebag comments were made by a bunch of stupid guys on Facebook. Because there's a lot of stupid guys in WoW. Quite often the same ones that like to say shitty things about women in Trade Chat.

I think someone is allowed to be unsurprised about men saying stupid things like that without needing to jump up and defend the guys who aren't stupid. I know a lot of guys who don't say stupid things but that doesn't mask that there's a lot of men who regularly say stupid things in regards to general forums, facebook, etc.

[akemii]

also why am I not surprised that all the replies above were made by immature kiddies

*fixed for accuracy :P

Although, I'll say that I love macros because I don't have very long fingers. Sad, but true. My reach on my keyboard without lifting my wrist is up to the number row to 6 (and even that's a bit of a stretch). I would love to bind spells to the function keys and shift/alt/ctrl modifiers, but I'm pretty limited. :/

The official forums aren't too bad if you can get past all the complaining and whining XD I've actually found lots of informative posts there.

[feitan]

Phrased the italicised better than I could have. :P

Personally I use macros for 2 things; so they don't clog up my action bars, and so that I don't have to stop and type something that needs be saying over and over.

I have the same problem, small asian hands and I use the shift modifier alot... so with my pinky on the shift, I can only reach up till 5. :C

[akemii]

Yes, small Asian hands! XD My boyfriend thinks they're cute, but I've found them to be annoying when I hit the wrong button and vanish for no reason.... ^^;; Although, they come in handy when I have no trouble typing on the netbook keyboard hehe.

[maladaptive]

Ugh this! I have long fingers... for someone with such small hands. All my spells on the modifiers are the rarely used ones/openers, because it takes an extra second or two to move my hands around and hit them. I'd love to have even MORE macros to bind to the keys I can reach in a split second, particularly with my new spec that requires at least 15 spells within easy reach for my playstyle.

[seileurt]

I love macros to find things. I especially like the one I read up on that puts a raid target symbol on it at the same time. Helped a lot doing cooking quests in Org... = )

Macros were also my saviour when tooltips were causing me to crash. Click once, no more tips and I can kill the headless horseman. Click again, they're back.

[rainisnice]

lol, macros are for noobs? these kids clearly don't pvp/arena.