RIP: Computer Gaming World
As seen over at The Ancient Gaming Noob, who picked it up at Ars Technica, Games For Windows magazine, formerly Computer Gaming World, is officially closing its doors.
This is a sad announcement for me because I always assumed this magazine would be around forever. I have very fond memories of this magazine when I read it back before I had a computer to play games on. As a teenager, I was fascinated by the games you could play, and I anxiously awaited for each issue to arrive. Once I was finally able to buy a computer, Computer Gaming World became my staple for gaming news and reviews.
One of my favorite sections was written by an author known as Scorpia. She wrote about role-playing games and sometimes went into great detail about her adventures in those games. Reading her articles on the Ultima games really sparked my interest in the genre and was one of the catalysts that eventually got me involved in Ultima Online and MMO’s in general.
I think the magazine took a big downward turn when it became Games For Windows Magazine. The new design and focus didn’t appeal as much to me as the old school CGW version did. It was decent enough, but some of the quality was lacking.
We can probably blame the internet for putting the magazine out of business. The same thing is happening in the newspaper industry. People can now get all the information they need on the subject with just a few clicks on the mouse and without paying a dime. The digital revolution claims another one.
I salute you, Computer Gaming World, for bringing me all the fantastic gaming news and reviews for so many years. You helped spark my interest in computers and computer gaming.
Read MoreVanguard: After The Big Update
The folks at Sony gave Vanguard a big update while I was away from the game. I had completely forgotten about it until it came time to buy my new spells. I dinged level 15 while whacking gremlins, so I went over to the Nakai Dojo to see what was available.
I hit up the Druid spell vendor and that is when I remembered the game update. There were several spells for the levels I had already gone through as well as some nice ones for my current level. Some of the highlights for me were:
- Lifestream 1: AOE Heal
- Rampant Roots: AOE Root
- Ire II: Arcane Direct Damage
- Wolf Shape: Turns me into a wolf
- Ant Shape: Turns me into an invisible ant for 3 minutes
- Starfall: 1982-2087 Direct Damage
For soloing, the two that really stand out for me are Ant Shape and Starfall. Ant Shape is really just a fancy way of granting invisibility. I turn into a small ant that I can see but enemies can’t see. Three minutes isn’t very long, but it is nice to know when it will wear off. It also has a five minute refresh before you can use it again.
The other great spell is Starfall. With the damage is produces, I am able to one-shot kill orcs with ease. The one limiting factor to Starfall is that it uses Phenomena points. You have a set number of points and each time you cast Starfall is subtracts from that total. Once you use up those points, you must wait for them to refresh. I believe it takes 1 hour for used points to refresh.
They claim that there were some graphical performance tweaks in the update, but everything seems the same for me. It runs just like it did in January. Things still hitch and I still have to use the /flush command every now and then to get performance back. They claim that a fix for the hitching is on the way. Let’s hope so. As a reminder, my PC is an AMD X2 6000+, 3gb RAM, and a Nvidia 8600GT 512mb video card.
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