Steel Series Guild Wars 2 Gaming Peripherals

Steel Series have just released their own brand of Guild Wars 2 themed gaming peripherals. This brings me on to an interesting topic as well, so I figured i’d mix in some news with a discussion and sees what you guys think.

http://www.steelseries.com/products/games/guild-wars-2/guild-wars-2-gaming-mouse

Based on the Steel Series Kana, the GW2 mouse has been designed with white and red colours to match the theme of Guild Wars 2, featuring the same great functions and a guild wars theme. Thanks to the support of the Steel Series Engine software, you can record even extremely long and advanced macros to the Guild Wars 2 Gaming Mouse. The macros can not only be layered and can include keystrokes and precise timing, but they can span across your peripherals allowing you to have a mouse button assigned to perform keyboard strokes and mouse clicks in the same macro. How you will decide to use this advanced feature is up to you (choose your configurations wisely and adhere to any rules that you may need to abide by during game play); we are only presenting you with the capabilities for endless possibilities.

Everything here on is pretty much opinion, but in my opinion these could have been a lot better. While the colours definitely stay true to the overall feel of Guild Wars 2, White is always a very hard colour to pull off and with a bright ‘danger’ red it can either be really nice or really ugly to look at. Personally I’d have preferred a black design with white and red rather than what Steel Series have gone for, but with the mouse and headset they used I suppose it doesn’t look too awful.

The only product I’m completely satisfied with is the Guild Wars 2 QCK which is their gaming mouse surface, you might have recently seen it with a Diablo or DOTA 2 skin but the GW2 ones look pretty amazing. I suppose with the prints they used it’d be pretty impossible to make unattractive, but with the great product that the QCK is and with the GW2 prints it’s a must buy in my opinion.

With the release of this products it gives me a good opportunity to talk about gaming peripherals in general, those who vendor them obviously will state that it ‘improves your game’ gives you more performance to have an edge above the competition, but is massive DPI mice with a special grip and extra buttons really going to make you a better player? Do mouse mats with special particles for optical mice to track better really show their true colours? It’s all down to speculation really. Many people who would state they don’t own the items and never had so their opinion is pretty invalid, however pro-gamers also don’t get a huge amount of say because typically they get these peripherals thrown at them so the value of gaming and normal gear isn’t really shown to them. They’re also typically sponsored by the companies that make them so it’s only natural gamers that watch e-sports feel compelled to buy them. It’s also human nature to ‘fan-boy’ or protect a brand that you have chosen over another one so there that. Though myself I like both Steel Series, Razer and Roccat but my preference is money wasn’t an issue would be Razer for their mechanical keyboards (I really feel these make a difference) in the way that every key stroke is audible and you can feel it as you let go as well.

I also favour their Razer Naga Hex for the 6 easy to press buttons and it’s pretty much designed for games like GW2 and MOBA’s so I can’t argue.

But what about you? Do you feel these items really make a difference or is it just brand publicity? Do you own any of these items?