Quake 2 is setting a new gold standard for remasters

Whereas QuakeWorld uses a network update model based on acknowledgement, Quake II pumped out complete states of all visible entities/objects at a steady 10 Hz and assumes the client interpolates between those states (Primarily to make animation easier for singleplayer, as variable animation rate plus interpolation can be a lot to keep track of per-entity). As Quake II uses UDP connections and has to deal with packet loss, it was seen as easy to just keep pumping out full entity/object states with no regard for deltas. This was later seen as a mistake by John Carmack [1] and they'd try a lot harder in Quake III Arena. This is still a bit of a thorn in many peoples eyes that make modifications to Quake II as you have to break compatibility with the entire mod ecosystem if you wanted to address this. Would have been nice to see this rectified in the re-release.

With the re-release you're basically sending out 4x the rate of the original and there's still slow connections which might chug on all that data. Some parts of the US still deal with speeds that are closer to modem than broadband.

Anecdotal evidence: Some years ago I was advising a fellow Quake II modder on how they could fix some limitations of the network model. They took the easy way and changed the update rate to something higher that felt smooth enough for them and it'd render anything but listen/local games unplayable because they were sending out too much data over the network. Eventually they gave up and started on top of a QuakeWorld based engine to avoid reinventing the wheel.

Also some fun trivia: In the original Quake II, physics are rounded down to network precision. They are not rounded to nearest, mind you - which results in a drunken walk. Unless you're around the [0,0,0] vector on the map's coordinate system, you will be unable to walk forward/back in a straight line.

[1] https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/mast...