The Grumpies (02-06-04)

It’s Grammy weekend…again, and Grumpy thinks everyone knows how important those are! (For Grumpy’s Botswanni readers, those are the awards given to the BEST MUSIC OF THE YEAR — that average Americans might have heard.) Besides the obvious benefit of seeing an endless parade of HasBeens and NeverWas’s on stage, the awards show is a not-to-be-missed opportunity to engage in binge drinking. Grumpy suggests you down a shot each time the “Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake Incident” is mentioned.

This Friday, Grumpy thought it might be sporting to give out his own awards for the Best and the Worst of SWG in general, and the Eclipse server in particular. What fun!

“Best” Den of Thieves – yes, Grumpy realizes that is an oxymoron, but any place with this much naked avarice is truly a treasure. The Rori Borgle Bat Cave! Seriously, worth a swoop ride just to see the dozens of players at the bottom of a cave huddled around debris. Even more exciting, sometimes they aren’t AFK!

“Best” Gamebreaking Feature – The Vendor/Bazaar Situation. Choking off the livelihood of thousands of crafters when the vendors grind to a halt after noon each day is pure evil genious. Sony’s virtual lack of response for MONTHS just makes this feature, and award, all the sweeter.

Best Example of Crafter Pride – This is a real award (note the lack of sarcastic quotation marks). Grumpy was really impressed by how much time and effort Abido put into decorating his shop, home and PA structures. See for yourself here: Grumpy’s seen a lot of creative decorating in SWG on several servers (back when he used to give a d*mn), and Abido is a master. /bow /grovel

Worst Public Cantina – Coronet. There is no contest here. Have you been there lately? If not, save yourself and shuttle elsewhere. The entryway is jammed with AFKers, new arrivals ask for an entertainer invite for an hour or more, and Grumpy is f’ing sick of hearing the text macro “Heal me if I need one plz kthxmuchly”. Grumpy would like to say “how bout you use this stim and bl*w me?”, but he doubts anyone is at their keyboard to read it.

Best Place to Kill an Overt and Get a Cursing Tell Afterwards – Fort Tusken. Nothing gives Grumpy quite as much pleasure in SWG these days, as /declaring and swooping out to good ole Fort Tusken to look for an overt. It is especially sweet when they mistake Grumpy’s red dot for just another Tusken red dot and come running upstairs with their group to kill the Tusken Grumpy. SURPRISE!

Most Annoying SWG “Feature” – The self-storing vehicle. Out of dozens of annoying “features”, Grumpy curses the loudest (IRL!!) at his swoop when it gets tired and takes a break back on the datapad just when Grumpy is out in the middle of nowhere … usually overt, alone, buffless, without any camp kits and now, to top it all off … he’s pissed too.

Hardest-working Eclipse Crafter – Tally and her alt chef. As far as Grumpy has ever seen, her vendors are always well stocked, she answers emails and finishes custom orders promptly, and is always polite to her customers. (Unlike Grumpy, who is frequently rude to his victims/customers.) Even more amazing, in Grumpy’s opinion, is that Tally has been a professional crafter and merchant since dirt was young and Grumpy was just a punk architect.

Best Developer Post Warning Players Not To Make Thunderheart Cry Again – (Ed. note: thread was deleted by Sony, wonder why) — Grumpy doesn’t watch the Dev Tracker too often because in his experience, most of the Dev posts are of the “Hi Ashni” variety. But he ran across this one and found it hilarious on many levels: The mental image of TH running to the men’s room to sob in a stall because the “players were mean to him”, the bullsh*t Sony is trying to feed us about not eliminating PvP item decay, and the whole PR nightmare that was created…well worth the price of admission.

Congratulations to all the Grumpy winners. Sadly, there will be no monetary award, but upon your character deletion, you will achieve total consciousness. So you got that going for you. Which is nice.

The Grumpy Master Architect ©