Need for Speed: World was the fifteenth installment in the long-running racing video game Need for Speed franchise published by Electronic Arts. This iteration was co-developed by EA Black Box (rebranded Quicklime Games before closing in 2013) and EA Singapore. It was the first freemium MMORG in the Need for Speed series (though Motor City Online was originally conceived as a Need for Speed game) and was available on Microsoft Windows. World was released worldwide on July 27, 2010. However, people who ordered a "Starter Pack" had an early "head-start" in the game, which started on July 20, 2010. Need for Speed: World, along with other EA free-to-play titles Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield Play4Free, and FIFA World, went offline on July 14, 2015.
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World was clearly ahead of its time. And by that I mean it was as grindy and obnoxious as most live service games wouldn't become until a good decade later. Since servers were shut down in 2015, the only way to experience World today is on community servers. And even with all the currencies and microtransactions removed, my few hours with this game were one extremely repetitive and grindy affair.
Driving and customization were actually pretty cool here, and the world, while lacking a lot of the soul from Most Wanted and Carbon, was fun to explore. Usable items were a nice addition to the formula, though I find it kind of tragic that they were introduced here and not six months earlier in fun racer spin-off Nitro, where they would have been a much better fit.
Respect the devs who tried to revive this game, but it remains buried.