Creative Labs World of Warcraft Wireless Headset Review

Configuration and Customization

To all the World of Warcraft fans, the headset features two back-lit lenses showing the symbols of the “Alliance” and “Horde” factions that war over the world of Azeroth. Creative Labs promises that they will release class- and race-specific lenses in the near future but, for now, you only have these two options. There’s a little tool included to help you change the transparent lenses.

Figure 4: Back-lit emblem.

The headset starts functioning immediately after being plugged in. Just connect the USB transmitter, plug the cable to the headset for the first charge and Windows 7 will promptly download and install the driver and ask if you want the WoW Wireless Headset to be the default sound device. However, to fully appreciate the headset, you should download the configuration software from Creative’s website that allows to fine tune the THX-certified equalization. Believe us, it enhances the performance and also the fun factor. We’ll get to it later on.

Figure 5: Configuration software.

Through the software, you can control the transparent lenses lighting (displaying over 16 million choices of colors) or turn it off completely and also equalize the sound to enhance voice clarity or boost the bass. You can create different profiles associated with several games, VoIP chatting and pure music listening. For us, the “Dialog plus” EQ feature was great because we play World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare 2 talking with our buddies through a Skype conference call. We tried amping the bass to the max, but the end result was so cinematic that we felt like we were in the middle of a firefight in Iraq. After a few tweakings here and there, we set it to our liking and saved a profile. It’s possible to bind keys to shortcut several functions like muting the microphone, changing profiles, tweaking the EQ. Nice.

The software also allows for a joke that so far has kept our gaming friends laughing hard; altering your voice to the tone of several characters from World of Warcraft like “female orc,” “village elder,” “elf male,” or “felguard” (a demonic soldier). It’s a legitimate high school prank and a guarantee of plenty of laughter all around. It has nothing to do with the product’s overall performance, but it’s another nice feature.