World of Speed Online combines the two worlds of racing games and MMOs. In the past there have been several games which tried to tackle this combination. World of Speed brings some of the great elements of the racing game genre into the online space where players can form teams, race opponents, and even build their own tracks. We met with the crew from Slightly Mad Studios to have a look at the game and get the low down.
The racing portion of the game takes place on tracks all over the world. For the demo we raced through San Francisco. The mobility and features for the racing portion are very fast and give the driver some freedom on how they race. All races are a free for all format, there are no rules to them. This allows for crashing, bumping, and all the other dirty tricks that make racing games fun. We did a single race for the demo and were reminded how bad we are at these type of games. The open environment works very well with the race itself giving plenty of destructible areas. The team stressed that they want to give players multiple ways to win in the races. They do not want it to just be about who gets first place every single time. Because the game is played online and has all kinds of leveling up possibilities they want to bring more options to the racers in order to achieve victory. Right now the races work in 2 vs 2 and 4 vs 4 format. This will hopefully be expandable in the future.
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The custom garages and levels of customization with the cars in the give a lot of tools to players to build exactly what they want. There are all kinds of paint jobs and custom emblems to put on the cars. Progression comes from both the cars and garages that players can use. There are already different types of cars in the game and the team is working on adding more as soon as they get the rights. Boosting your garage will give you access to more custom work on your car and some upgrades to systems.
Territory Wars is a major aspect of the game which works similar to guilds in a regular MMO. Players can form racing clubs and work on ways to upgrade garages and plan for races against other clubs. The club can even get to a stage where if they have enough winnings they can get their own track to host races on. The track can be set up with all kinds of logos and emblems for the specific racing club. The team wants players to work with them on coming up with more ideas on how clubs can interact and do battle on the tracks.
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World of Speed Online has all the fun of a full racing genre game with the progression and community of an MMO. The plans to have more tracks and continue to grow the world is all part of building up a strong community. We enjoyed the demo race and expect to see a lot of clubs form in the early days of the game. The team expects to be in open beta sometime this year.
Garrett Fuller / Garrett is the Industry Relations Manager for MMORPG.com. He cosplays as an orc, plays X-Wing on weekends, and loves Adventure Time. You can follow him on Twitter (when he uses it) @Gfulls.
