MMORPG's Bill Murphy gives readers a first-hand look at the upcoming EA Black Box title, Need For Speed World (NFSW). After laying his hands on NFSW at E3, is it all it appears to be? Check it out!

Need for Speed World is a pretty ambitious little F2P title. Taking a million-selling racing franchise to the online PC gaming world seems like a pretty obvious idea, but the fact that EA Black Box is trying to do more with the title than just offer a lobby where you set up races against friends and foes, is pretty unique. Like the title suggests, NFSW (not to be confused with NSFW) has a massive over-world where you and other racers will roam the streets, anger and outrun the cops, cause destruction, and compete for control of various sections of the map. At E3 2010 I had the chance to plunk myself behind the controls and give it a go.

Read the rest of Bill's take on Need for Speed World.

Two things:

1. It will be f2p uptil lv10 (max lv will be 50). This makes it as much f2p as WAR or AOC is.
2. Who the hell thought it'd be a good idea to include powerups in a NFS game????

I love the F2P model because it lets people check out the game before they sink cash into it. However, I think F2P mmo's need to provide more permanent items in the cash store.  I understand that balance becomes an issue when paying players can buy better permanent items, but I am sure they can work out the balance issues to make everything fair.  

Welp, as soon as i read that you can buy better cars and what not via the cash shop, that canned it for me.  I simply will not play a game in which someone can beat me in a race b/c they spent more in the item shop.

Not to mention the fact the devs admitted there will never be out of car avatars. Which is something that killed it for AA. The cars are not transformers for crying out loud and it makes the game look even more short-sighted and last-century to not include full body avatars for downtime in the social areas between races. 

I think it is just one of them Fluf thing i like to see in an MMO

WAR and AOC are not  F2P, thay have a free trial, peoples inability on here to use more than two words (P2P and F2P) to describe MMO revenue models amazes me. Is our average age 12 years old or something?

Originally posted by Hrimnir

Welp, as soon as i read that you can buy better cars and what not via the cash shop, that canned it for me.  I simply will not play a game in which someone can beat me in a race b/c they spent more in the item shop.

 

 You're making the assumption that you'll be racing each other. Maybe cars in  any given race will be similar level?

Originally posted by striker09dx

Two things:

1. It will be f2p uptil lv10 (max lv will be 50). This makes it as much f2p as WAR or AOC is.
2. Who the hell thought it'd be a good idea to include powerups in a NFS game????

its curious how you know for certain that the max level for F2P will be 10 and 50 for those who pay to play when the Devs havent released what the levels will be.

Edit: Ok the Official word is you can play until Level 10 but if you purchase the Starter Pack you can level past 10 with no other pruchases required. There will also be no monthly fee to play the game so technically striker09dx is still wrong the game is still Free 2 Play since the definition of F2P is no monthly fee required to play.

"Like I said, this is one racing game that's not taking itself too seriously."

They lost me there. 

I'm actually interested in seeing how this turns out because I used to play Drift City often, and that certainly was a racer that was not too realistic.

The previous NFS games may not have been super realistic but this is much more arcade like than them all.

I still don't get why they are making this as a MMO. Is it because the burned out on the IP and no longer plan to make NFS games?

Originally posted by akiira69

Originally posted by striker09dx

Two things:

1. It will be f2p uptil lv10 (max lv will be 50). This makes it as much f2p as WAR or AOC is.
2. Who the hell thought it'd be a good idea to include powerups in a NFS game????

its curious how you know for certain that the max level for F2P will be 10 and 50 for those who pay to play when the Devs havent released what the levels will be.

 

 

Edit: Ok the Official word is you can play until Level 10 but if you purchase the Starter Pack you can level past 10 with no other pruchases required. There will also be no monthly fee to play the game so technically striker09dx is still wrong the game is still Free 2 Play since the definition of F2P is no monthly fee required to play.

Free to play actually means..... wait for it..... free to play. Not free trial uptil lv10, not b2p, not f2p till lv10 then b2p, but again most people seem to be easily duped by the current f2p waves these days.

NFS: World looks bad, so bad that me and my friends dont even want to play it even if its free!

Now on to what I really want to tell EA... EA people signed petitions and begged you to bring back MotorCity Online, you ignore all these fans/players... paying customer, cause we paid to play MCO.

I would still pay to play MCO right now and would much rather have a racing MMO that is like what MCO was.

So EA if it's not to much trouble do you think you could take some the good from MCO and implement it into NFS: World?

Is there any plans to bring the MCO servers back up or give the players a way to run private servers?

And serious NFS: World lack of car tuning options and the lack race tracks and types of racing really do seem lacking when compared to what MCO offered...

NeVeRLiFt

Never take the advice of a one time poster who suggests you play another game.  I look forward to you proving my concerns that you work for CTR are groundless with your continued posts.

Just played it extensivly since they've opened servers for 3 days and...... it's not worth it.

The game is just average, from graphics to gameplay and features.

Powerups. They really didn't think this through, at higher levels the power called 'traffic magnet' rules supreme, so basicly wins a person that has enough stacks of this power, and mostly is in 2nd-3rd place through whole race just to win at the end because he/she had it. There is so many hate regarding this, players definitely don't like it.

I've played it for 2 days now.... and I'm already bored.

Played the beta with a friend yesterday and have to agree with Kellerman24.

And to add... NFS: World is pretty bad game, its lacking race tracks, race types(road course, dirt, oval, drag-racing etc) laps. lenght of track/road course choices and day/night/weather.

Its lacking cars for goodness sakes! And there is no tuning/tweaking your car at all its just prepackage thing you buy thats makes your arcade on rails car get up to speed faster and have higher top speed.

MotorCity Online puts NFS: World to shame and blows it away in terms content, options, variety and the simple fact it was a solid racing mmo that allowed you to build and tune your car like you would a real hotrod/import-tuner/musclecar/sportscar etc.

EA has nothing here with NFS: World its just dumb down larger online racing arcade game with silly powerups and with bad leveling/opening of tracks.

Like I said I would pay to play MCO again, but I won't even be playing NFS: World even if it's free its just that bad!

Played the beta this weekend and I have to say it was a huge disappointment, as stated above the cars handle very arcade like and the powerups are unbalanced. The lack of cars to pick from is disapointing and the parts and customization are barely there you can't change any individiual parts just a small handful of pre-configured upgrade packages. At level 5 it seems the first upgrade package unlocked for teir 1 but teir 2 cars unlocked along side this.

The lack of race types and things to do in the world is the worst tho. The one none race hangout spot was a stadium that you could teleport too and start an event to "show off your ride" where you drove around taking screenshots in the stadium.

One other major thing lacking was the ability to find your friends and do things with them, my friend joined and we got in a group but there was no on screen indication that we were grouped. Opening a social panel we could teleport to each other but then there was no way to stay close besides visually keeping track of each other I couldn't distuingish him on the map. We then tried to join a race together, to do this we had to both queue up at the same time and hope we got in the same race, there was no way to join as a group that I could tell.

Overall its got potential as a fun arcade online racer but even for beta its very lacking in content and IMO not ready for a launch, how could this have already been in Asia for over a year are they playing a different game?!

I'd never pay $30-$50 for a box, or a regular subscription, but I've enjoyed my open beta experience so far.  Enough that I plan on playing it a bit more when released, and maybe even sinking a few dollars into it.  Maybe I'm just a sucker for polish, and it seems well polished, at least.

As far as the complaints go, its funny how different expectations can be.  I really had none, given my experience with other MMO driving games, from APB, to Auto Assault, to Upshift Strikeracer.  All of which have vehicular mechanics ranging from bad to awful, IMHO, compared to most decent single-player driving games.  NFSW, I'd actually rate as ok.  Not great, but not bad, either.  Good enough to be fun.

People say NFSW is arcade-like, but I can only wonder if they ever tried Auto Assault.   That was arcade-like in the worst possibly ways, and has maybe made me more forgiving of all online driving games since.  Plus, maybe I do like arcade-style driving in some cases, like Twisted Metal Black.  If it's well done, arcade isn't necessarily a bad thing, and in NFSW, it seems relatively well done to me.   

I just wish there were a little more sliding.  I love using controlled slides and drifting in car games, and in this one, you don't quite stop on a dime, but almost that bad.