Hello! What has happened here?

[Kyosho]

Granted it has been a while since I've visited the site. I see PCGR and VGR merged, or rather, VGR gobbled up PCGR. Some things are gone. The most reviewed games list thing. And is the review contest gone alltogether? Wait, no, it is still there. Just not able to view the current winner on the front page. In fact there's a lot of stuff that I'm going to miss. Oh well. Sorry to sound to negative. I see there are new forums as well.

Anyways, hello. Long time no see.

[Kyosho]

Sorry about my complaints. I've just down some searching around on the site and saw all the stuff about them. Forgive me. Anyhow, my "Hello" still stands. :p

[moya]

Greetings (again).

Yes, things are a little different round here since The Great Change™. In fact, although it appears to have changed beyond recognition, it isn't that different to the way it was before. The forums are better, for example, but the reviews section does lack a couple of features that made it extra special (the ones you mentioned being the most noticeable). However, I think the site's got over the initial teething problems pretty well. In the beginning, for instance, the reviews weren't sorted alphabetically, meaning you had to trawl through reviews by "category" to find the one you wanted. As if that weren't enough, the games used to be listed with the publisher first, rather than the title, making it doubly difficult to search effectively. Eventually though the site admin got their act together and knocked it back into roughly the same shape it was before, give or take a few details.

There has been a bit more interaction between the PC and console community since the forums merged, but I definitely don't think we've lost our identity as a PC gaming community or anything, and I certainly wouldn't say we've been "swallowed up" by VGR. The System Wars forums do provide Renzatic et al with an opportunity to bait the X-bots and Sony whores, but it's still predominantly consolers over there and PC gamers over here.

Now, although we've retained our PC-centric identity, the direction games development is going in at the moment is a different story. But perhaps you should talk to Warren Spector about "streamlining" for the latest on that topic...

[Lord Matt]

When did this change actually happen?

I was gone for quite a while, and I've still yet to explore the site that much.

I've gotten better too I think. I used to go out and buy games left and right and never play them. Now I've been back to good old Starcraft for the past two months, almost done with the addon. And when that's finished I'm going to either get a new game to redo The Longest Journey, and I'm going to play all the way through it (that used to be a rarity). And it's good to have money when your not trying to buy every game out there :D

[Lara]

Hi Matt. The change over was in early August, last year. It was a rough transition, but all that could be adapted to the way our members were accustomed was done. Unfortunately not everything was possible. If you're interested, read through site suggestions and see the what we went through! The admin, Chris and the engineers Vlad and Mike did everything possible to make the transition satisfactory to the members. Not everyone was happy, but if you do read through the posts, you'll see it was a necessity. :)

[Jasmania]

As a recent prodigal poster myself, Welcome back! You will find many of the "Usual Suspects" still here & posting. The change my take some adjusting to, but players never change. Check the archives and look for the thread re: Gamers have lives outside of gaming". It's a good quick way to get re-accquainted.