Mouse Turning into 4 Way Arrow on Right Click

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106

This has been happening to me for months and months at this point. It seems to be happening more often lately, too. At least once per day. When it ends up happening… I just logout of the game completely and go play something else (which is probably not ideal for Blizzard).

I have no repro steps or anything helpful to add to it at all other than it seems completely random (can happen seconds after logging in, or hours after doing nothing of interest when killing/looting mobs).

Just another hand-raise in the room that this happens to me very, very frequently… on multiple computers and multiple WoW versions (WoW Classic Era, Wotlk Classic, and Retail).

I’d hook up some type of client event logger for Blizzard QA and simply play the game like a normal player and hope that the event gets captured.

I cannot fully describe how annoying this bug is. It’d be way less so if a reloadui worked but, no, you need to completely close WoW and re-launch it to get your mouse back to a normal state.

2 Likes
107

I am able to reproduce the problem by following thugn’s steps as well. Sometimes it takes a few tries, and I have to move the mouse quite rapidly, but it reproduces it without fail.

My best workaround right now is to be slower and more careful with my camera movements in m+, but that isn’t ideal and can’t always be helped. Hope blizzard can figure out why this is happening.

108

What worked for me after trying a bunch of different solutions is - running the game as administrator. Haven’t been able to reproduce the cursor bug since doing this. Haven’t tested for long so would appreciate if someone else could confirm it.

To do this:

  1. find Wow.exe or Wowclassic.exe in your retail or classic folder
  2. right click - properties
  3. in compatibility tab select Run this program as administrator
    Launch game normally through launcher.
109

This is happening to me too. Have three monitors. Seems to happen at random. Only restarting the game fixes it.

110

Just tried this and the problem still happens. :frowning:

edit: After using the run as administrator option, it still happens, but it seems to be significantly less frequent. Did 8 keys today and didn’t have it happen once during them.

111

I recently started playing retail and it happened in the beginning. Deleted the “WTF” retail folder so I was playing retail on a fresh install and noticed that it re-enabled v-sync. Was unknowingly playing with v-sync for the past week, was not having the issue.

Turned v-sync off today, the bug happened in the first dungeon I did. For the others having it happen, do you have v-sync on or off?

112

Rapid mouse movement combined with right click camera while dragonriding in forbidden reach triggers it pretty often.

113

Started happening recently here, running a dual monitor setup (game on one, browser on the other). I saw a few people mention having multiple monitors so I thought I’d chime in.

I also recently scaled my resolution in-game down to 75% if that’s relevant.

114

I’ve had vsync on the whole time. Still get the bug.

It seems to happen waaaay less frequently if I have nothing open on my other monitor.

115

I tried running the game in Administrator as someone above suggested, so far after a few days I have not had the cursor bug. I haven’t been playing as much since the season is over, so it could be that as well.

116

So I was having this issue came to this thread looking for a solution. I have a theory as this cursor thing was happening to me pretty regularly, while just doing mundane stuff like questing and for the moment have seem to have eliminated the issue for me. I was reading this thread and read something about the blizzard launcher and that the cursor might be connecting with a un-minimized blizzard launcher in the background of the game, so I set the blizzard launcher to minimize on game Launch and this indeed seemed to eliminated the issue, however my theory is this is that for what ever reason when the cursor accidentally catches the blizzard launcher behind the game window, the problem persists until restart of the game; because catching the Blizzard Launcher for what ever reason is flipping this MouseNoRepositioning Cvars Command to 1 and then bugging out that same command, as turning it off dosnt seem to revert it until restart of the game. If this is the case, no fault really on either side Devs, or Users, as I don’t see how either party could predict that happening.

tldr: Set Blizzard launcher to Minimize on Game start or set it to minimize to system Tray on Game Start in theory should fix this issue as it has for me.

117

Short version - I made a Weakaura (Link to Wago.io below) to test this and when the 4-way arrow starts showing up, the CVar values do not update at all and standard CVar events do not fire. Whatever is happening is outside the scope of CVars, it seems.

Long version:

So, I’ve been watching this thread for a while because this has been happening to me. I was curious after reading your post, Jambrix, so I tested some of this by setting the CVar via the SetCVar API with /run SetCVar("MouseNoRepositioning",1) (And 0). Sure enough, the 4-way arrow does respect this setting, and this lets me manually swap between the behavior.

HOWEVER - The issue from the OP is that this happens seemingly randomly, which is what has been happening to me. When the issue happens on its own, without manually setting the CVar, it does not respect the CVar. Once the 4-way arrow starts showing up from “It” happening (whatever event it is), there is no way to make it go away without completely restarting the client.

Curious about the CVar’s behavior, I made a little Weakaura to troubleshoot.

This Weakaura is always active, and it will always display the currently acquired CVar value for the “NoMouseRepositioning” CVar.

It also spits out debugging information whenever the value changes. I am watching for the CVAR_UPDATE event, with a CVar name of NoMouseRepositioning. Additionally, it has an OnUpdate event tracker that is checking for value changes every frame.

When I debug with /run SetCVar("MouseNoRepositioning",1), the Weakaura properly prints to the chat window that a change has occurred, and the value on screen updates, printing once for the OnUpdate check and once for the CVAR_UPDATE event, both are caught. Good so far.

When I log in with the Weakaura, it says that the value is 0 on login. Again, this aligns with expected behavior. After playing for ~30 minutes this morning with the Weakaura running, the 4-way arrow started to show up on its own again, as has happened to me before and most others in this thread.

Crucially, the Weakaura did not print any events. CVAR_UPDATE did not fire. The CVar value itself from GetCVar is 0, despite the 4-way arrow appearing. So whatever is happening, it seems to be happening outside of the game layer, or outside the scope of CVars for the client session.

I uploaded the Weakaura here: https://wago.io/8eIusgp9Q

I hope this helps in your investigation, Jambrix, and anyone else from the Blizzard team. Feel free to take and modify for further troubleshooting. You should be able to add in other CVar checks if you need (If you all feel comfortable using WA for debugging, but if you don’t the overall structure is pretty straightforward and could be mocked up without WA, WA just makes it much easier and quicker to construct, IMO.)

Other players feel free to try and confirm the behavior. This Weakaura does use an Every-Frame update so I advise disabling it before doing any group content as I intentionally skipped performance optimizations. It’s just to confirm the CVar behavior.

Akinilke - I have not yet tried your workaround, I only just now saw your comment, I will try this as well to confirm.

3 Likes
118

Just to confirm, I set my launcher to minimize to task tray on game start, and I am still getting this issue :frowning: . Was worth a try

2 Likes
119

I have done 40 m+ keys this week without the issue happening at all. I play with admin turned on, blizz launcher closed, and NOTHING on my second monitor.

Only seems to happen if I have things on my other monitor, and it has happened during high movement moments like m+ keys as well as in regular mundane content like flying to a dungeon with dragon riding or walking around valdraken.

120

Hm… Something I didn’t think about until recently. How many people who are experiencing this issue are playing on Windows 11 versus Windows 10 or Mac or Linux, etc.?

If there is a possibility for the issue to originate outside of the game client like Lisonna is suggesting, then maybe there is an interfering bug from a recent OS patch/update. I really don’t know, I’m just trying to say words until maybe someone who might know how to test for it better than me can look into it and resolve the issue (lol). I’m just offering ideas, that’s all I can do at this point.

~Bearly

Edit: Oh, just for reference, I’m on Windows 10, but I’m not sure if that’s relevant since I never experienced the issue.

I appreciate the effort, and I appreciate someone who’s more advanced than me looking into this. :slight_smile: I’m still just an apprentice, for lack of a better word. heh

121

I’m running windows 10. I can provide more specs / details if needed.

122

Hello, I just starting having this issue today 4/19/2023. Within 15 minutes of troubleshooting I have recreated the issue 100% of the time in my own case. I have 2 monitors and when I open wow the issue is not present, I move my cursor out of wow and onto my second monitor and activate (click the second monitor) WoW becomes a background program and goes mute. When I return my mouse to WoW it now has the 4 way cursor 100% of the time while trying to recreate this issue. It makes the game extremely unplayable as while I am holding to pan my view and my mouse virtually crosses the monitor plane it sends WoW to a background program and stops all inputs.

Playing in Fullscreen (Windowed) only other option is Windowed and that does not resolve the issue. Only way to resolve is to close WoW completely and re-open. Once my mouse crosses to the second monitor and clicks it happens again. Hope this gets fixed or I will have to un sub as I cannot play.

123

Straight to the point: Try /run SetCVar("rawMouseEnable", 1)

This has been happening to me since around the day this topic was started. The number of monitors has nothing to do with it, because I have a single monitor and I still get this issue.

It’s a band-aid fix, but it seems to be one solution that doesn’t require the player to completely exit the game: it appears the command /run SetCVar("rawMouseEnable", 1) will allow you to move your mouse to the borders of the screen and your camera will still move as expected rather than being stuck. I am not sure if the sensitivity is still affected or not, but it seemed to work for me. I am using the ‘Fullscreen (Windowed)’ option and haven’t seen any issues so far. I am not sure how this will work with more than one monitor, but hopefully it does help.

Just remember to use a maximized window if you intend to use Windowed mode, because the cursor will leave the boundaries of the window, or just have the ‘Lock Cursor to Window’ option enabled. The cursor will also still be the 4 way arrow, but it’s better than nothing!

2 Likes
124

Short version: Torag’s suggestion alleviates a portion of the issue and is helpful, while not fully resolving the issue. See below for details. Thanks Torag

Long version:

For the below, please note that any time I mention camera drag/move, the statement also applies to character turn. That is, the effects of holding right and left click are effected, not just left click.

To reiterate the original issue, there are ~2 primary effects when holding down right or left click.

  1. The cursor changes to the 4-way arrow and remains visible
  2. The cursor moves with the held-down mouse movement (When releasing click, the cursor retains its position after the dragged motion, rather than being at the position of the beginning of the click, which is the original behavior).
  • 2a. The camera / turn motion becomes bound to the screen edge. I only play with a single monitor, so I cannot confirm the effects with multiple, but if I shrink my wow window down, my camera can drag beyond the window borders until the cursor hits the edge of my monitor, where the dragging stops

Originally I had point 2a as its own effect, but I think it’s just a side-effect of #2.

#1 feels weird after playing since launch, but is purely aesthetic and isn’t that important.

#2 and 2a suck and can make the game, especially gathering with Dragonriding, where quick mouse turning is essential to both A) mousing over the minimap nodes to see what they are (something I think should be improved in the UI but that’s an entirely different topic) and B) not flying into objects as you are flying very fast, almost unplayable.

I delineate these effects because I don’t want it to seem like we are all just complaining about a visual cursor change.

Torag’s workaround (setting the cvar rawMouseEnable) does not impact #1 (cursor remains visible and a 4-way arrow). It also does not fix #2 (cursor continues to move after holding click).
However - when the arrows begin to show, I can confirm that setting rawMouseEnable allows camera drag to continue even when the mouse hits the edge of my screen. That is to say, this fixes 2a, above.

While this does not fix the issue fully, it is a welcome improvement and I will be setting it as I play until this is fixed.

Thank you for finding this, Torag.

1 Like
125

I thought it was fixed with running as administrator and minimizing the launcher, but it has started happening again.

Edit: It is happening A LOT now. It’s becoming unplayable. I can’t in good conscience raid or do M+ with this still happening.