I’m a tad nervous about the
packaging for the third-gen
Ryzen CPUs. It seems that
AMD and Intel are gripped
by an inexplicable need to
make their CPU packaging as
over-the-top and pointless as
possible. I think it’s wasteful;
the Threadripper cases, in
particular, are faintly absurd
constructions of hard plastic
and polystyrene in luridOh no, I’m playing an MMO
again. As I write this, I’m
reinstalling Final Fantasy XIV.
I played it a bit back in
2013, but not more than
a few months. My real
MMO heyday was World of
Warcraft, on which I spent
several of my high school and
college years. But XIV has
somehow managed to pull
me back in. The game hasorange. Why does the Core
i9-9900K come in a bizarre
dodecahedral box? That’s
not for lesser minds to know.
I feel as though I’m trying to
solve a puzzle on a late-night
game show, encouraged
by an unseen cheering
audience. What will the
Ryzen 3000 series bring? I’m
hoping for a box that’s bigger
on the inside.a new expansion launching
soon (it’ll be out by the time
this goes to print), and a ton
of my friends are playing right
now. Alas, such is the draw of
the MMO community. Would
I play it by myself? Almost
certainly not. But with old
friends and new logging in
on a nightly basis, I’m looking
forward to diving back into
the MMO world for a bit.christian guyton
Staff WriterBo moore
Hardware LeadQuake II Is the latest in a long line
of games to get some retro love, with
Nvidia releasing the RTX rendition of the
id Software classic. This remastered
version adds ray tracing to the first-
person shooter, and transforms its limited
gray, beige, and brown palette to a slightly
lighter gray, beige, and brown. There are a
few mirrored surfaces to stare briefly at,
and a smattering of upgraded models, but
largely it’s the same game from 22 years
ago, with nominally prettier visuals.
And it’s a complete waste of
everyone’s time.
Not only does it not look particularly
inspiring, and therefore completely fails
at its primary goal of selling real-time
ray tracing, but it doesn’t play particularly
well either. Gameplay has come on in
leaps and bounds in the last two decades,and this just feels like an old game that
has been bettered multiple times over. If
you want a first-person shooter, then this
is not the game you’re looking for. It also
runs terribly: 22fps at 4K on a 2080 Ti in
RTX mode, as opposed to 997fps using the
OpenGL driver.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved Quake II
when it was originally released. I have a lot
of fond memories of playing it back in the
day. And, indeed, playing through the first
few levels again, I even managed to recall
where the hidden areas were. But I’ve no
real interest in playing it through again.
None. Been there, done that.
This attitude sums up my feelings for
World of Warcraft Classic, too. I played
it at the time, and don’t need to play it
again. If you were too young or too old to
enjoy it back then, it’s a great experience,but simply going back and doing it again
now holds no interest. I’m much more
interested in moving games forward than
revisiting how good they used to be and
seeing if we can take them in a different
direction by constantly revisiting them and
asking the same questions.Yesterday’s favorites shouldn’t be showcases for future tech
Respect the Past,
Don’t Ray-Trace It
Destroy your frame rates in a classic
twitch shooter today.alan dexter, executive editor©^
id software92 MAXIMUMPC aug 2019 maximumpc.com
in the lab