Need for Speed World

Need for Speed World was Electronic Arts' attempt to bring the series into the world of free-to-play online games, at a time when this model was only just starting to reach big AAA brands used to selling games exclusively in boxed form. Instead of linear tracks, it offered an open map assembled from two well-known cities – Rockport from Most Wanted and Palm City from Carbon – joined into one continuous world where players could roam freely, meet other drivers, form informal clubs, and take part in races and police chases without paying a single cent for access to the game itself.

The free-to-play model showed up at every turn. New cars, tuning parts, and faster progression could be bought with the in-game currency SpeedBoost, which could be earned by playing or purchased with real money through microtransactions. The game ran on a modified version of the ProStreet engine and combined free roaming through the open world with a set of classic events fans knew from previous entries – sprints, circuits, drift challenges, and police chases with an escalating heat level. The server was continually updated with new cars, body kits, and events, which made World function more like a live service than a one-off release, with regular seasonal events, time-limited challenges, and leaderboards meant to motivate players to come back to the game every week.

Running an online game like this was expensive in the long term, though, and with waning player interest and competition from cheaper free-to-play alternatives, Electronic Arts decided to shut the server down for good on July 31, 2015. That made World disappear from playable existence entirely, since it was a purely online title with no offline mode or single-player campaign, and unlike the series' classic entries, it can't simply be run on your own computer today without the official servers.

Why play it: More as a historical chapter of the series than an active experience – it shows what the first attempts by major studios at online free-to-play racing looked like, before this model became common practice in the industry.