Ever since it was announced last August, I’ve been anticipating the availability of the Creative Labs WoW headset.  Today, I finally received mine.      I ordered mine through Amazon.com on Thursday for a retail of $159.99, and after overnight shipping, it came to $181.95.  Your shipping cost may vary and tax of course, depending on where you live.

So after opening the huge box from Amazon, here’s what I got.

Inside the box, going clockwise from top left we have:  the headset itself,  a storage bag (which has two internal pockets with Velcro to keep them shut, a small flat head screwdriver to pop out and change the lenses (below the screwdriver),  the USB dongle,  a USB charging cable,  a quick-start guide, and the detachable microphone.

Note that there is no driver disk included.  I’m ok with that.  Instead the quick start guide tells you where to download the driver.  That ensures you will always have the latest driver when installing for the first time.   Installation was very simple.  First before I did anything, I plugged in the headset to a free USB port with the charging cable to get that started, like it recommends. (Well, before I did even that, I changed the lenses.  Mine came with the Alliance glyphs installed.  I quickly changed that to Horde.)  Then, after downloading the driver,  I plugged in the USB dongle to another port and did the pairing.  Pairing was easy.  Hold down the connect button for 3 seconds on the headset and release.  The lens should flash blue.  Then press and hold the connect button on the dongle for 3 seconds and release.  The lights should stop flashing then.  After pairing, I installed the driver and then rebooted.  That was it.  All done.

While rebooting, I put them on.  They fit snug, and are very comfortable.  They are a little heavy, but I quickly got used to them.  They cover the ears very well, closing out a lot of outside noise.

So, after that, I went into the Audio Control Panel, and started making adjustments.  First, I set the color of the lenses to red.  They’re cyan by default (or at least it was on mine).  Next I went to the THX section.  There I turned on the various settings.  There are five options:  Crystalizer (Enhance music and movies to make them sound livelier), Surround (Control the level of audio immersion in music, movies, and games), Bass (Enhance the sound quality and bass of any speaker system for a better listening experience), Dialog Plus (Enhance the voices in movies for clearer dialog), and Smart Volume (Adjust the loudness of your audio playback automatically to minimize sudden volume changes) .  I turned them all on, and set them all at middle (50%), which I adjusted later while playing.

Next I checked out Game Audio.  This section allows you to enable VoiceFX (to change your voice) and enable the EQ.  There’s about a dozen presets and you can of course adjust each slider on your own.  It has a few WoW races you can chose from to change your voice to.  I was a tad disappointed there wasn’t a Tauren to chose from, but maybe in a future update (hint hint Creative?).

The last section is for key bindings.  You can set up key bindings to do different things in game with your headset, such as turning on and off the various THX settings, turning on and off RGB color cycling, and so on.  Note that if key binding is enabled,  they will be locked out of other applications.  The warning is also present on the key bindings page.

So, the main reason you’re here is you want to know how they sound.  After all, panels are nice, but sound quality is the key.   Ok, well,  I have to say, I am not disappointed in the least.    I had an eargasm the first time I logged into WoW.  As I walked, I could hear every little sound.  I could litterally hear the grass crunching under my feet.  I could hear the subtleties in the water fountains in Dalaran.  I then went up to Argent Tournament to do a little combat.  I swear, it was like I heard the game correctly for the very first time in the five years I’ve been playing.  I can’t emphasize more how phenomenal this headset sounds.

Now, in game, I had to make a minor change to be able to hear the full 360 degrees of sound.  Under the sound options, I changed it from default sound device to the headset device.  If left to default, I couldn’t hear full surround sound.  That may be because Windows still sees the default headphones as 2 speakers only.

Next, I tested the headset to watch a movie.  I wanted to chose something that would have a lot of sound effects and dialog, so I chose the new Star Trek movie.  I used a Blu-ray version of the movie with Cyberlink PowerDVD 9 Ultra.  After a couple of minor tweaks in the software to make it play 6 speakers rather than 2,  the movie came to life.  Again, sound quality is phenomenal.  I got so engrossed in the sound, I forgot to stop the movie after a few minutes and ended up watching the entire thing.

After the movie, I put in iTunes and played some of my mp3s.  My music library ranges from hard rock, classic rock, classical, jazz, blues, country, metal, and video game soundtracks.  I played a wide range of my music library to get a good eclectic mix.  Again, the sound quality was impressive.

I only have one real complaint about them.  The wireless range doesn’t seem to go very far.  I can go about maybe 20 feet away before they lose signal.  My kitchen is about 50 feet away from my computer, so I can’t go all the way there to get a beer or soda while playing.   Now, your mileage may vary.  My computer is in the corner of my room, so I have to go past a few walls to get to my kitchen.  You may have better range depending on your home’s layout.

The wireless runs on 2.4GHz, but it doesn’t seem to affect my wireless router.  I imagine it was made to be outside of the range of the 2.4Ghz channels that most routers use.

As for the microphone quality, I got onto Skype with a friend and talked for a little while. She was able to hear me very clearly.  I had to bend the microphone slightly to come closer to my mouth.  The noise cancellation works very well.  She said she couldn’t hear any background noise, not even my fan I have running behind me.  I could hear her very clearly as well, better than I ever could with my old headset.   I played with the VoiceFX for a few minutes, which incited a lot of laughter on her part.

Overall, I have to say this headset exceeds every expectation I have had while waiting.  Of course, I will keep playing with it and if anything changes I will certainly let you all know.  I’m not going to give a number rating, because I think those are bs.  Instead of a number rating, I will say that they are definitely worth the money (If you can’t afford the wireless, the wired version is $119.99).

]]> http://www.spiritfiresrealm.com/2010/03/12/creative-labs-world-of-warcraft-headset-wireless-edition-a-review/feed/ 0 http://www.spiritfiresrealm.com/2010/03/09/raid-eats-2-cake/ http://www.spiritfiresrealm.com/2010/03/09/raid-eats-2-cake/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:46:32 +0000 Spiritfire http://www.spiritfiresrealm.com/?p=226 The maker of Raid Eats made another parody of the popular Good Eats.  Give this one a look.

Bullworth is at it again!
In World of Warcraft food is everything. At least it’s a way to be popular. Chef Bullworth slices into the [Delicious Chocolate Cake] and its happiness-inducing side effects.

Bah,  makes you want to cry in your [Kungaloosh].

Logging in to the PTR, I see they finally implemented trading in marks of honor for Commendation of Service.  I’m a little disappointed, in that you can only hold 10 at once, so you have to trade 10 marks, use the Commendations, get more, use them again, lather, rinse, repeat, up until you hit the honor cap of 75,000.  I’m also disappointed they didn’t raise the honor cap.  Also, while the tooltip says you redeem them for 2000 honor, it only yields 1850 honor.  I don’t know if that is intended, or if it’s a bug.  We’ll see. 

Boomkins are getting a buff in 3.3.3…yay!   I’m not going through all the math and numbers, but in a nutshell, [Starfall] and [Nature's Grasp] are changing.  Starfall will  give about 2.5x more damage per star than before, and Nature’s Grasp will now have 3 charges per cast.  What that means is, after it roots someone, if they break out of the roots, it will root them again, up to 2 more times.  This will definitely help us out in PvP, allowing us more chance to make some distance between us and melee.

That’s all for now, I know I’ve been slacking.  I’ll try to do better.

Logging out

I will however touch on some things and give my thoughts.  First of all, the PVP changes.  THANK GOD!  No more of those damn marks of honor to have to collect and have cluttering my currency tab.  I’ve been trying to farm marks for the PVP mounts, and it’s annoying as hell.  Instead of marks of honor, all items will be bought with honor points, like we use now for gear.  To compensate, honor points for Honorable Kills will be doubled, as well as all other honor gains for completing objectives like capturing a base or destroying a tower.  For those not level 80 yet, the honor gains will be offset by halving the amount of XP gained.  Also, honor from completing weekly quests in Wintergrasp will be reduced by 50%, to offset the other honor gains.

Since of course you’ll probably have a ton of leftover marks you can’t use, you’ll be able to turn the marks in to your faction’s pvp quest givers, presumably for honor points, since Blizzard hasn’t elaborated.  Also I am hoping they will raise the honor cap, but I’m not holding my breath.

Also, no longer will you have a specific PVP daily to do.  Instead they are copying the Random Dungeon finder to make the Random Battleground finder.    The notes say that only a group of 5 can queue together.  I’m not sure if that means you have to premake your group, or if it’ll find random players to group you with like the Dungeon finder.

I have some mixed feelings about all of this.  I’m glad they are getting rid of the marks, as they were a pain in the ass, but the new Random Battleground finder could make things more difficult.  We will have to see how it goes. I’m downloading the PTR as we speak, and copied my main over to the PTR.  I’ll check it out and see what is up with the finder tool.

Also, I noticed that the notes say [Titansteel Bar] will no longer have a cooldown.  GREAT news for my hunter/engineer.  Making the [Mechano-hog]  just got a lot easier, of course also that means prices will plummet for titansteel, so the resale prices of those bikes will go down as well.

A couple other things I like.  I like the fact that now they’ve increased the dungeon deserter timer to 30 minutes.  That will hopefully cut back on the people who drop from dungeons prematurely.  I also like that they added the Authenticator input box to the same screen as the main login, instead of the box popping up seperately.  Of course that only happens if you have the authenticator tied to your account.

Well, I’m going to try to get to the PTR and I’ll be able to answer some of the above ambiguities about the PVP.  [EDIT:  After about an hour and a half of downloading and patching, I finally got onto the PTR]

I tested the group queue for Battlegrounds, and it seems that it doesn’t require you to have a group of 5 to queue.  I think it’ll not let you into a BG until you have a group of 5 though.  I don’t know.  Will require further testing.

Also, one very cool thing for us Alchemists (that is, if it stays) Frozo the Renowned in Dalaran  has [Frost Lotus] for sale at a little over 3g per.  Seems to be unlimited.  I don’t know if this will become permanent, but I hope so.

A lot of my addons broke, and I was getting a ton of errors popping up.  Hopefully those will be fixed as well.

Patch 3.3.3 seems like it could be interesting.  It’ll be worth watching out for.

That’s the fastest we’ve ever completed a meta for a world event.  It took us 4 days, from Sunday to tonight (Wednesday).  Next up is Noblegarden, which I completed last year but will help Theshat complete, then all we have left is Children’s week and Midsummer Fire Festival, and we’ll have completed [What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been].  I’m looking forward to my 310% speed [Reins of the Violet Proto-Drake].  Woohoo!

If you’re not familiar with Boom De Yada, it’s a lyric from a song called I love the world that the Discovery Channel made and used for their advertising campaign in 2008 and 2009.   People all over started making and posting their own versions on YouTube, and the Discovery Channel encouraged more, and even asked people to post theirs as a video response to their original.

So, tonight Theshat and I got a few of the achievements done. [Elders Of The Alliance] (both of us), [Elune's Blessing] (both of us), [50 Coins Of Ancestry] (me), [25 Coins Of Ancestry] (him), [Elders Of The Horde] (him), [Elders Of Kalimdor] (him), and the ones for the fireworks. I had done some of them already last year.

Tomorrow we’re going to try to knock out as many of the rest as we can. Some of the Northrend dungeon ones we’ll have to group for with others, but the old world ones we can do ourselves.

Well, that’s all for now. More tomorrow

So, as you may (or may not) have noticed, I’ve redone the site, and on the sidebar over there, I’ve added an armory feed of my latest achievements.  Last night,  I finally got the next step in [Got My Mind On My Money], at the 10,000 gold level.  It’s going to be one hell of a grind up to 25,000 gold.

Well, that’s all I have for the moment.  It’s time for some coffee.