The First Annual Peevie Awards

This is a Blog Azeroth Shared Topic as suggested by Amaranth of Specced for Drama

Hello, and welcome to the 2010 Azeroth Peevie Awards, where we recognize excellence in the art of irritation and annoyance!  Your host for this year is, as always, the single most annoying character in all of Azeroth and the Outlands, CORKI!

[pause]

Wait, I’m sorry, I’m told that he’s been kidnapped again; this time by a hostile coalition of squirrels from Elwynn Forest.  Oh well, we now present the 2010 Peevie Awards after the jump!

Award for Worst Dressed

Winner:  Malfurion Stormrage.  Antlers are sooooo 2006.

Award for Worst Sound Effects for an Ability

Winner:  Guardian of the Ancient Kings.  He grunts or yips every time I cast a spell.  What. The. Hell.

Award for Worst Voice Acting for a Boss

Winner:  Svala Sorrowgrave.  “My Liege, I have a done as you asked.  I have made my voice really deep and gravelly, even though it sounds quite silly.”

Award for Most Annoying Boss Phrase that is Totally Awesome to Repeat in Ventrilo Every Single Time  

Winner:  Sindragosa’s “BETRAYS YOU!”  Incredibly grating and occurring so bloody frequently, but absolutely hilarious when everyone in your Ventrilo channel starts repeating it after she says it during the fight.  My guildie Bomba does it best.

Award for the Most Phoned-In Visual Effect  

Winner:  Shadow Priest’s Shadowy Apparition.  Ok, so a version of my character in Shadowform slowly walks towards you and then disappears with no visual effect whatsoever.  Apparently this causes my enemies damage.  Certainly the slow walk is very intimidating, but couldn’t we have had something a little more interesting or spectacular?  Don’t you get the feeling that Blizzard wasn’t really trying on this one?

Award for the Most Brain-dead Raid PUG

Winner:  That Vault of Archavon PUG that after the Justice Point system is introduced still insist on only doing Toravon the Ice Watcher when all of the bosses are worth the same amount of points, even the facerollingly easy ones. 

Award for the Most Brain-dead PUGer

Winner:  That plate-wearing person who queues for Halls of Reflection in PVP DPS gear as a Tank, causing themselves to repeatedly get crit for three-quarters of their health and giving the healer fits.

Award for Strangest, Most Random Bug

Winner:  Hallows End Gear/Tooltip Bug.  This bug came with patch 4.01 that caused the entire game to crash if you moused over anything that used the gear cursor.  It was random since it didn’t crash everybody or with every single gear-interacted item and strange because tooltips had never been a problem before.  Unfortunately timed considering the Headless Horseman boss was started by this method, causing all sorts of havoc when the tank started the event and then got disconnected.  Honourable mentions to the Completely Random Combat For No Apparent Reason in Uldum bug and the Frost Wyrms on Amphetamines in Icecrown bug.

Award for the Most Inconveniently Timed Holiday Event

Winner:  2010 Winter Veil.  With the release of Cataclysm and everyone racing to either get levelled up or get geared, is anyone actually even doing this holiday event?  Honourable mention to Pilgrim’s Bounty which had a whole new world dropped right in the middle of it.

Award for the Biggest Nerf

Winner:  Holy Light.  Every class can make a case for gigantic nerfs, but I think Holy Light takes the win here.  It went from being the most absurdly overpowered heal in the game that could take a tank back to full health in one global cooldown to being weak, slow and almost inconsequential.  Looking at the big scheme of things, it fits well into the new Paladin healing system, but the spell itself is a mere shadow of its former glory.

Award for the Most Painful Upgrade That Just Won’t Drop For You Ever

Winner:  Shields.  Oh my god, were shields hard to get in Wrath.  Both healing and tank shields.  I went through ICC a fair number of times and never saw the shield from Marrowgar drop.  There were tanks chain-running normal Halls of Reflection to try to get Splintered Door of the Citadel off of Marwyn and abandoning the group if it didn’t drop, causing that dungeon to be virtually impossible to finish unless you brought your own tank or got a bear or DK.  I personally did get lucky and got it on the first run through on my Warrior, but my Paladin who had 251s in virtually every other slot was running with the iLvl 219 Protector of Frigid Souls from normal Scourgelord Tyrannus for the longest time until I got a lucky drop from Sindragosa 10 right at the end of Wrath.

2010 Facepalm Award for Most Insane Thing Ever

Winner:  The WOW Community and by extension Blizzard for Listening to Us.  This year’s prestigious Facepalm Award is for the entire WOW community, of which I include myself.

As a community, we have been very vocal about what we want from dungeons and raids in Cataclysm, and to Blizzard’s credit, they have delivered.  We were complaining about how easy WotLK dungeons were, we called for the elimination of mindless AOE and we begged for Blizzard to make Crowd Control matter again.  And Blizzard listened.  They gave us everything we asked for.  We have hard heroics, CC is needed on many pulls and AOE is a very good way to get the attention of a monster that would like nothing more than to eat your face.

Now that we have all of these things that we asked for, the other face of the community shows up saying that the dungeons are too hard, that nobody bothers to CC so Blizzard should remove the need to do it, where are my easymode epics, etc.

None of this is surprising.  It happens every time new content comes around that is challenging.  It’s kind of amazing that Blizzard actually is still listening, frankly. 

So this year’s Facepalm Award goes to the two-headed monster that is the WOW Community: We don’t know what we want, but we’re damned sure that Blizzard isn’t giving it to us.   /facepalm

That’s it for the 2010 Peevie Awards!  We had a great show, with the exception of Thassarian’s acceptance speech (yes, yes… we know, you’re going to ravage this land) and Alexstrasza’s unfortunate wardrobe malfunction.

Tune in next week for the 2010 Golden Candle Awards where we honour the best of the best of 2010 in Azeroth.  The Golden Candles will be hosted by none other than the Kobold that everyone hates to find: Goldtooth, who reminds you, “You No Take Candle!”