Days after the full release of expensive graphics cards malfunction after playing the game. New World is a recent MMO published by Amazon that sees players shipwrecked on an unexplored island, where they must gather resources and craft equipment to survive. The game saw huge numbers of players at launch, many of whom first experienced the game during its open beta earlier in the year.
Reports of problems with graphics cards after playing New World first appeared during that beta release. The issue primarily affected the Nvidia RTX 3090, an expensive card that should be able to play a game with modest hardware requirements like New World without any difficulty. After several descriptions of the same problem by New World players, Amazon released a guide to help solve the issue. It appeared to be a problem with uncapped framerates, and after Amazon announced its solution, there were few hardware problems during the beta version of the game.
With the game's official launch, however, reports on the New World forum (via PC Gamer) suggest that cases of ruined graphics cards have cropped up once again among the game's player base. Amazon has not yet released a statement about the problem, and it's unclear whether it's the same issue causing graphics cards to break down. The recent problems have been reported even with frame rates capped, suggesting that something else might be at fault this time around. Anecdotal evidence suggests that it may occur when the graphics settings in New World are changed by the player.
During the last round of graphics card issues, manufacturer EVGA announced that the cause was actually a hardware defect, and replaced cards for players who had theirs ruined while playing New World. Whether they will keep to the same policy is unclear, and likely depends on whether the same defect is causing graphics cards to malfunction again. Even if the manufacturer is to blame, the fact that the issue only seems to happen while playing New World is sure to cause concern among fans of the new game.
Since its release, New World has faced plenty of criticism despite its success. From long queue times and small server sizes to slow travel time across the map, reception to the game has been mixed even without this recent complaint. Breaking players' hardware is a far more serious concern than any in-game annoyances, and if the root of the problem isn't found and fixed soon, Amazon may find that New World proves to be much less popular in the next few months than it was upon release.
Source: New World Forum, PC Gamer
