Don’t have any disabilities that i know of. But if you saw me playing sometimes you’d probably think i do haha.
Joking aside I love hearing and reading some of the different stories about people with disabilities or handicaps use wow or other online games to let lose and not have people be able to immediately judge them based on their condition.
Anonymity can lead to a lot of unfortunate and toxic situations, but it can be so cool to free from snap judgements based on things such as appearance or physical/mental conditions
Essential Tremor, Seizures and partially blind in my right eye. Only time I see the inside of a raid is when a group feels sorry for me or I use gold for a run. Otherwise I just do casual content and level Alts. Weirdly I get praised as a Battleground Healer sometimes when I pvp. I think PvPers are just happy to get a Heal, they don’t seem to care that I suck.
This thread got me thinking how nice people can be. Most threads are just attacks on one another. A good portion of the people i have met in this game are either very young or have some disability. Even if its just mild depression. ( and yes that can be disabling )
I often have thought the reason for our toxic community is either youth or people with real problems and or disabilities just venting. Sure some claim to be average people playing a game. In this unpredictable world even the average, even the successful are suffering. Toxic stress from society effects everyone. The collective consciousness as some call it. And im not talking about any spiritual thing. Its science!!!
I have several issues myself and I try to play as much as I can. I been playing this game since BC.
I have osteoarthritis in ALL my joints,Fibromyalgia, Chronic fatigue, ADD, degenerative disk disease, Peripheral neuropathy Chronic pain and depression.
I play this game but happen to miss out on a lot of the content because I don’t think anyone wants someone that has to take frequent breaks when to raiding or mythic dungeons. It makes me sad that I want see the content but haven’t found some guild that will accept me in all I deal with.
Now not trying to gain pity for my issues just that many people are looking for the best players to fill their rosters and so forth. People like myself feel left out because they can’t perform to what is required to be in a Raiding guild.
Just my thoughts.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Yep, I’m legally blind with nystagmus (involuntary eye jerking), which makes it difficult to aim in shooters, etc. My vision is 20/200+ and glasses or surgery won’t help.
WoW isn’t too limiting, though. I only have serious trouble on a few specific fights and zones. I couldn’t raid Firelands, for example, because I depend on colors rather than shapes to distinguish things, and Firelands was like … hey, literally everything’s orange and black… XD
I also play Overwatch. I’m not that great at it, obviously. XD Only in Gold rank. But considering I don’t know what specific hero I’m shooting at 90% of the time until I hear them shoot back, I’ll take it. That game has AMAZING sound queues, though, so kudos to Blizzard for that.
I have similar issues and don’t do group content for the most part unless I know most of the group. I have the anxiety, and memory issues. I’d get lost in the little cave in the orc start area, and that was the case for an embarrassingly long time. I also have depression, ADHD, and a slight hearing impairment. I have enough fun pretty much doing my own thing in game.
Like, I’m so deaf, I’m literally off the charts. (This degree of deafness is incredibly rare, just FYI.)
Blizzard’s games have had been pretty accessible to a deaf player since the Starcraft days (1998), which is one of the biggest reasons I’m a Blizzard fan.
So honestly, by Blizzard’s own design, deafness isn’t even a factor in playing WoW! Unfortunately, some raiding guilds have a hard time envisioning how a player could play without sound and so they make Vent/Mumble/Discord/whatever else a requirement, which is a pity.
However, there’s a deaf raiding guild the last I checked! Heroic and mythic raids. My sister (who is also deaf) raided with them in MoP and WoD before having to stop due to real-life demands. She made the top 200 healers world-wide.
So yeah, in WoW? Deafness = no biggie! Socializing with players who don’t like to type? (Either because of an actual physical issue, difficulty with reading, or just plain laziness.) THAT’S where the occasional obstacle comes in.
EDIT: that deaf guild which got brought up earlier? That’s indeed the guild. Pity to hear that it’s broken up… my sister and I knew a fair few of the officers (and the GM) in person. We actually get to watch the GM play WoW (he was visiting my sister) on my laptop; it was their first time successfully defeating the Heroic 25-man Deathwing fight. It was pretty epic! Hilariously, though, they wiped a couple times due to one rogue tunnel-visioning and missing all the spawns. It was this fight that inspired my sister to start raiding.
Only physical disability that I have is a busted heart. May have to have bypass surgery in the future. I have to get up every hour and walk to prevent any kind of clot from forming.
For others with more severe limitations, I applaud you on overcoming your limitations when you can.
I remember seeing a video of someone raiding by using his keyboard an item in his mouth . Can’t seem to find it though.
Some videos of others playing with disabilities.
My mother, of all people, always said how I have Asperger’s Syndrome, even though my dad was there, and could tell you I was never tested for it, yet my mom was always insisting that I actually have it. I’ve had many CAT scans, MRIs, etc. All came back negative! And, as I’ve been told by very old adults, in the 1980’s and 1990’s, NO ONE was tested for Autism, because it wasn’t a diagnosis at the time.
I play mostly with one hand, which is why I prefer official controller support as I don’t like to mess with the game. That said, for normal/heroic dungeons and LFR, combat in this game, especially with the number of buttons for the specializations I’ve played so far, hasn’t been too bad. (Of course, my DPS is probably very bad, but meh.) If it were like FFXIV, I would probably have a very bad time with just keyboard and mouse, so I’m glad FFXIV has official controller support. Still, if WoW gets controller support in the future, even if it stays on PC and doesn’t go to console, I’d be even happier, but for now, I’m managing it, I think.
I’m on the autism spectrum and have motor deficits and poor hand-eye coordination, that is, my body doesn’t move very fast, including my fingers, and I sometimes hit the wrong keys. I do okay in most respects though. I make a genuine effort to be at my best when doing group content, but I probably do a lot less of such content than average, and I really have to psyche myself up to do it.
I have an inoperable (but thankfully benign) brain tumour stuck in my head. My motor functions and reflexes are kinda shot and I’m a lot slower than I used to be, but I truck along as best I can.
All of you guys who adapt to your circumstances are the real stars here.
My wife and I both have dexterity issues. We can use both hands, but we type slow, often hitting the wrong keys. I even have fingers that are slave to each other. Razer’s Naga is a Godsend. My wife wishes that the buttons are bigger though. She also has very poor vision and needs both a TV sized monitor and large print.
I use my number pad for moving up and down and with what is left over I bind as much as I can (which isn’t much).
People can’t believe I play the way I do and honestly I don’t think this qualifies as a disability but I live in a right handed world, the struggle is real!
I can’t even imagine moving with W,A,S,D. Every game I play I have to reset all keybinds, such a nightmare. My left-handed naga is my bestest buddy.
I used to play, as I was able to accomodate multiple disabilities prior to the 8.0.1 expansion pre-patch. Blind and deaf on right side, deformed right arm w/ random spasms. I don’t play anymore because with the removal of exclusive fullscreen, the random loss of window focus causes the mouse acceleration curve I so painstakingly set up just for WoW (in order to combat the random spasms and lack of finer motor control in my right arm) to change mid-play.
I needed both the reliable acceleration curve and the original UI layout without resorting to addons to move it. I needed the latter because I have to click abilities as I hold a dual shock 2 controller in my left hand to move + backpack + strafe + party select (dungeons) whle clicking with the mouse to activate abilities and addons that move those bars often taint in combat, locking out clicks. I can’t use the current layout as-is because frequently used items are on my blind side. But moving them back resulted in taint from addons frequently. So chicken and the egg there.
I had six months remaining on my sub when 8.0.1 dropped. Lost it all and every relevant event during that period because I could no longer accomodate my disabilities. And so I just watch as everyone else gets to keep playing. It sucks losing physical accessibility because Blizzard refuses to care about players like myself.
Don’t ever take your ability to play for granted. It could disappear in an instant like it did for me.
![:sweat_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/sweat_smile.png?v=6" ":sweat_smile:")
That game has AMAZING sound queues, though, so kudos to Blizzard for that.![:frowning:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/frowning.png?v=6" ":frowning:")