The one where racing went online and free-to-play on PC.
Need for Speed: World, originally titled Need for Speed: World Online before release, is a defunct massively multiplayer online racing game (MMORG) developed by EA Black Box (renamed Quicklime Games for the last year of its existence) and EA Singapore. It was the fifteenth installment of EA's Need for Speed franchise and operated from 2010 to 2015.
Released as a digital download-only Windows game on July 27, 2010, with those who pre-ordered a "starter pack" allowed to play up to a week earlier on July 20,note World was set on an open world map that combined the cities of Rockport from Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) and Palmont from Need for Speed: Carbon (2006). Those cities' environments were tweaked and new roads were added to connect the two seamlessly.
The gameplay was mostly similar to both Most Wanted and Carbon, as players' cars can be upgraded and customized to be driven in different races and the franchise's famed police chases, but with a few notable changes. First, players had access to some replenishable power-ups that mostly gave enhancements to their vehicles, ranging from the franchise's typical nitro boosts to temporarily increasing the car's strength and durability in collisions. Second, RPG elements were added such as a progression system where players can level up by earning "Reputation" or "Rep" to gain the ability to buy better cars and have access to "driver skills" that improved the performance of all the cars players drove, though the latter feature was replaced by skill mods that were unique to each car. The level progression system was initially restricted at launch; players could only level up to level 10 (out of 50, which was later increased to 60 in December 2012) before needing to pay for the starter pack to progress further and continue earning cash, but this restriction was removed on September 8, 2010, after the game reached one million registered players.
The game was criticized during its almost five years of existence for its grindy nature and pay-to-win mechanics, where players who spent real money on better cars were much more likely to win races. Furthermore, its later years were marked by changes in developers, with Easy Studios (Battlefield Play4Free) taking over operations on September 10, 2013, and an increased focus on adding cars over adding new features or locations. Eventually, EA announced on April 15, 2015, that the game would close its servers later that year on July 14, with the ability to purchase microtransactions or make new World accounts disabled, marking the end of Need for Speed: World's tumultuous existence. After a final celebratory event called "End of the World", the game was closed for good on the announced date.
However, two dedicated fans,
known as "Nilzao" and "berkay2578", refused to let Need for Speed: World die off and reverse-engineered the game beginning not long after the announcement of the server closures. The two eventually re-released it unofficially months later, initially as an offline game before they and other World fans managed to reinstate its online multiplayer mechanics in 2017. This new unofficial freeware version of the game, known as Soapbox Race World (stylized as SoapBox Race World, or SBRW for short), allows NFS fans to continue playing World together completely for free with the predatory microtransations removed. Several fan-run private servers using the Soapbox Race World framework continue to run to this day.
Need for Speed: World features examples of:
- Achievement System: An April 10, 2013 update to the game added an in-game one of these that gave players various awards for completing them, including cash, card packs, aftermarket parts, upgrades, and even cars.
- Allegedly Free Game: At first it was only free to play up to level ten, at which point free players stopped earning Rep and cash until they bought a starter pack. Although that restriction was lifted a couple months later, the game was still very much a grind to progress and winning races became harder unless players bought SpeedBoost (the game's premium currency) and use them to buy better cars, card packs, and upgrades. Thankfully, Soapbox Race World has none of that.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Players who had the cash to burn would buy SpeedBoost to buy better cars and upgrades so they could win races, which really proved the "pay-to-win" aspects towards this game.
- Broken Bridge: World had holographic barriers in place to prevent players from accessing certain areas.
- At launch, players were forbidden from accessing Downtown Rockport, Kempton, and Fortuna until those areas were added on October 26, 2010.
- Throughout the game's run, there were a series of roads that linked Kempton and Downtown Palmont with Downtown Rockport that were never completed by developers (since they ended up focusing on more cars) and thus were blocked off by holo-barriers. Sadly, Soapbox Race World hasn't fixed and opened these up, either.
- A road called the Rockport Turnpike was added to the south of Downtown Rockport that included a bridge with a toll booth at the end. It would have supposedly allowed players to drive to Tri-City Bay if it was ever made, but instead, the rest of the road was blocked off by another holo-barrier placed immediately after the tolls, although the roads only went a bit farther past a hill that hid the end of the game map.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: An update that was released during the game's official run made Heat Level 5 pursuits a lot tougher by constantly spawning more cop cars, police roadblocks with spike strips, and especially two Rhino SUVs coming in every ten seconds.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: The Pursuit events had players trying to keep going for as long as they possibly can (or want) while causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to the state. If they lose the police and want to keep going, then they can keep driving and seek them out again to continue the chase. If they happened to get arrested though, then all they suffered was a loss of a couple hundred dollars and their heat level reset (since lower heat means lesser rewards).
- Double Unlock: You could not just enter the map and buy your way to the best cars; you also had to gain reputation (experience) levels to unlock the ability to buy those cars.
- Hammerspace Police Force: Hoo boy were the police departments of this world loaded with cops, police cars, spike strips, and Rhino SUVs! If you were at heat level five (Federal police), you had to
prepare for hell. - Hot Pursuit: No surprises here since it's a NFS game, although police pursuits had to be triggered via event spots after an update. But unique to this entry was Team Pursuits, where two to four drivers had to work together to get through a Sprint event-style track filled with cops and all make it to the end together before time ran out without getting busted.
- Instant-Win Condition: This could be invoked by the players themselves in pursuits with the Instant Cooldown power-up. If the police lost sight of a player and entered cooldown mode, then the player could simply activate this power-up to end the pursuit immediately without waiting for the cooldown timer to run out or trying to find a cooldown spot to speed up the decay rate.
- Moving the Goalposts: Could be invoked by a player in circuit races with the "One More Lap" power-up, adding another lap to the race in hopes of using said extra lap to take the win from whoever would've won after the initial final lap. To avoid making circuit races overly long, however, this power-up could only be used just once per race between all players and cannot be used if the leader is close enough to the start/finish line.
- Nitro Boost: This came in the form of a power-up that players could assign separately for free roam, circuit races, sprint races, drag races, police pursuits, and Team Pursuits, though with limited uses unless players won more from completing events or bought more with SpeedBoost, though Soapbox Race World allows players to keep adding more uses continuously for free. The nitrous is a few seconds of speed boost used at the tap of a button (much like Powershot nitrous in 2012's Most Wanted) and has a cooldown period after each use.
- No Plot? No Problem!: Despite being set in two cities whose games were the pinnacle (relatively speaking) of storytelling in the NFS franchise, this entry had no plot to speak of. You're just a random street racer in a world filled with other street racers enjoying the life of underground street racing between two cities.
- Photo Mode: Meeting Places allowed one or multiple racers to go to a specific spot on the map to show off each other's Pimped-Out Car and take pictures of them with a freely movable camera.
- Vanity License Plate: World featured a wide variety of custom license plates to add to cars, each with its own background design and text. (The game did not allow players to set their own text for the license plates.)
- Zip Mode: Players could use the map window to select an event and teleport themselves to that event's spot. However, it wasn't necessary to start the events from there, especially since the "start event" option was automatically available upon selecting the event's icon, so players used these to get from one end of the map to the other if they didn't feel like driving the whole way.
