Key Binders Versus Mouse Clickers

My friend and esteemed guild leader, Verde, placed a video on the guild youtube channel of his raid group downing Yogg. A really great achievement for our mainly social guild. Along with a few positive comments, he also got a slew of trolling about the fact that he is a 'fail clicker rogue'. This seriously makes me ask, can you really accuse someone of being 'fail' if they're killing tough end game bosses?! Verde has posted on his feelings on his blog and I thought I'd follow on from this with a slightly more in depth view.

I asked via twitter and via our guild forum whether people play as clickers or key binders, or indeed if there were some hybrids. I wasn't surprised to find that the majority of people who replied on twitter were binders. My experience is that people who use twitter are generally more computer literate, adding the fact that most of the respondents are also bloggers, I felt that they would be more au fait with setting up a keyboard to make their lives easy. This isn't a scientific test by the way so don't leave me comments about it not being a representative study ok?

My fellow guildies were quite a mix and this is where I got some interesting information. A mix of pro key binders (to the point of having those special gaming keyboards), avid-clickers with programmable mice and a lot of hybrids like me. A few stating that it depends on what class they are playing, that on some chars they play with a macro heavy set up and on others it's clicking all the way. I wanted to know why they played this way, for the binders it seems to be that they were used to this play style from all the RTS, FPS, and RP games they played before. For those who click, it's pretty much how they started playing WoW and if they change now, all sorts of problems occur in their raid teams.

Us hybrids are in an interesting position. For my own part, I really didn't get all the 'wasdftw' stuff until very recently. Then I realised that I hadn't key bound anything, I was just pressing the buttons WoW's standard UI told me to. Other hybrids range from those just beginning to start binding to those who use keys and the mouse and are raiding the very latest content. There were a few people who commented that for melee classes especially, key binding was a definite advantage, but not a necessity and then there was our trusty guildie who plays with no add-ons whatsoever and no clue about the terminology of clicking versus binding.


So if you do click, does it really make you a 'fail' player? Well I go back to my original remark, if you're downing tough end game bosses, then how can you be a 'fail' player? In this particular case I know that the player can knock out the high level DPS needed for these end game raids. I also know that the player isn't being carried by his team, this team works hard and works together. Personally I can see that key binding has definite potential. I haven't bound any of my keys further than the WoW standard so far, but having had this debate on the forum and having seen Cynwise's PvP set up I am inspired to make some changes. I don't know what impact the changes will have or if I'll stick with them when I make them, I will obviously keep you informed.

Essentially, as with all things in this World of Warcraft, if you're enjoying it, keep doing it. If you aren't enjoying it change it or stop doing it and leave everyone else to enjoy their game. Simples.