“We’re here to make the fans happy.”ĭe Vellis described NFS World as “highly social.” The dev team has discussed the integration of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, and in the game itself, usernames are displayed above players’ cars. And the impetus behind new content will be the user base: fan feedback will be incorporated into development, so “if there’s huge outrage for a certain mode they want so bad, I can almost guarantee that we’ll build it,” promised De Vellis. Along with new playable regions, plans are in place to “regularly” add cars, social features, and game modes. “The game you see today will be completely different in three months, six months, nine months, twelve months, two years - we’re going to be expanding this game for as long as we can,” said De Vellis. Because EA is keeping the game exclusive to the PC, and because it is an MMO, the developers aren’t constrained to a traditional build-it-and-ship-it development cycle. Even as areas are bolted on to the existing framework, the world will remain seamless.Įxpansion is the ethos behind Need for Speed World. De Vellis told me that the developers will add new sections to the world after the game launches, and that they will likely be taken from other hit NFS games. Currently, the game offers more than 150 miles of roads to race on longtime NFS fans will recognize parts of it as Palmont (from 2005’s Need for Speed: Carbon) and Rockport (the setting of 2006’s Need for Speed: Most Wanted). The game world in Need for Speed World is already “ the biggest Need for Speed arena ever,” and it’s only going to get bigger. This is certainly the first attempt at an MMO in NFS history in fact, De Vellis asserted that nobody’s ever done a racing game like this. It’s a major part of EA’s push toward digital services the game is a free-to-play, microtransaction-based MMO, which is a market that the publisher already took a stab at with 2009’s Battlefield Heroes. Need for Speed World is a PC-exclusive Need for Speed MMO that is in development at EA Black Box and EA Singapore. When I brought up that point at a recent EA showcase to Marc De Vellis, a producer on Need for Speed World, he affirmed it, noting that the game is “huge for the company, huge for Need for Speed.” Electronic Arts has stated a preference to cut back on packaged retail games and transition into a publisher that provides service-based digital goods.