Just sparked my interest after reading another thread. I know some people use awsd as their primary movement keys. I was just curious to why? I use my arrow keys, always have. Reason for this is I use my left hand on my arrow keys with a combination of my mouse for spinning and looking up and down. And in general just feels more of a natural motion with the position of the arrows over wasd for movement. Just curious of the advantages that may come from not using the arrow keys.
wasd has many more keys nearby it that you can utilize. Arrows are surrounded by control and shift, and Enter, which typically already have functions assigned to them. I converted from arrows about 4 years into my EQ career. No lookbacksies (that's my take on it)
I'm not a wasd user but believe there are a large # of other games which use that as the default setup, so folks used to that would probably adapt it into EQ I'd think.
For me, I type more than click. So I keep the hands in a position to get to the typing keys as quickly as possible. So I keep one hand on the asdf etc, which have all been reassigned from movement keys to actions. Then my other hand is on the arrow keys.
ARROWS all day erryday. I have 8 hot bars mapped to the other keys and targetting/XT targetting mapped to ctrl+shift+# And all kinds of letter + shift, ctrl, or alt. My main multibind keys are . And , so right next to the arrows. I think I'd have an aneurysm if I tried controlling my movement with my left hand. O and I have mouse clicks mapped to keys next to my left hand. I rarely if ever actually use a mouse.
A few years ago I was convinced to change my movement keys to ESDF (from the arrow keys). It was difficult at first to get used to, but I'm really glad I changed. The main advantage of using wasd/esdf is the improved ease and number of hotkeys you can use. Minimizing the distance to your most commonly used hotkeys allows you to play faster. Having more hotkeys in the immediate vicinity of your fingers also makes you play faster. The hard part is memorizing everything. I can't say the same is true if you're left handed.
I use left+right mouse key for forward, side mouse button for backward. It seems to me that the mouse has much finer control than using keyboard.
Arrows, I need to control motion with my right hand, it just does not work with my left. Also the PgUp and PgDn keys are right next to my arrows, so I can fully control my motion, and look around with my right hand, and handle hotkeys with my left.
As a touch typist the ASD keys put my left hand one key away from home row. When I need to type I only need to move my right hand from the mouse. I do lots of typing when I play.
I'm right-handed, but I've grown used to controlling movement with my left hand. I use the arrows for movement, Control + arrows for strafing, NumPad 0 for jumping. My mouse only has two extra buttons, which I've assigned to my Push-to-Talk key and Cycle Closest NPC. The only keyboard shortcuts I really use are for out of combat stuff, otherwise I click buttons with the mouse.
Arrow keys because it leaves less change of misplacing my fingers and doing something unfortunate when I am super busy.
3rd person view, wasd for movement, mouse+right-click to swivel camera tab to cycle targets, E for FD, F for stand, 5 for range attack 1 for auto-attack, multi-bind on 2, 3's empty, 4 is mend 0 (zero) is bound to mouse button for Moving Mountains. Other mouse button is 'push to talk' in ventrilo. The rest is magic.
Arrows are inefficient and clumsy. Hands too far removed from typing, not many keys around plus the need to constantly move would make this really awkward.
I use the number pad for all movement. 8462 for movement, 9 and 3 to look up/down, 5 to look center and 7 for auto-run. The only time I use my mouse is if I have to click on something, which is pretty rare.
Arrow keys are what I've always used. Combined with mouse look and third person view, it's a lot easier to maintain situational awareness.
Arrows, since I started EQ in 2000. First, I hadn't played any games previously which used awsd, so I had no prior bias towards them. Second, I sucked at awsd, with all the surrounding keys, I was always fat-fingering some other key. And on every keyboard I've had, the 4 arrow keys have a gap around them, so if I move my hand to hit other keys, I can return to the arrows without even looking. After enough years, I can't even wrap my brain around the thought of changing, so it'll never happen. Tat
Arrows are near the " / " key, which is the first key I hit when talking. I play on a laptop though, so the arrows are closer to everything else than on a real keyboard, for sure.
Number pad here. most of the keys around it have specific functions as well. 8462 for movement, 9&3 look up and down, 5 centers camera, 7 is furious leap, 1 is battle leap, 0 toggles auto attack, num lock toggles autorun, / is use center screen, * is field protector, . is staunch defense, - is phantom aggressor, + toggles map window, and enter is my multi bind mash button. Left hand sits on number row to use hot buttons with ~ is cycle npc targets. Mouse only gets used to move items around inventory.