When Electronic Arts announced its intention to take the Need For Speed franchise into the massively multiplayer arena we were somewhat dubious. On paper it’s an attractive proposition - buy a car, spend loads of cash on it and rag it around a city in races against other players. The only problem is, the year is 1999 and broadband was little more than a pathetic rubber band – the kind that snap because they've dried out in the sun.

Looking good

What started life as Need For Speed: Motor City, became Motor City Online and was released to critical acclaim at the end of 2001. Two years later it was dead in the water. EA's original idea was clearly light years ahead of its time, but it’s fair to say they learnt a lot from the experience.

Some might think it’s a bit pie-in-the-sky for EA to attach one of their biggest licenses to the Free 2 Play (F2P) MMO released today, but as it is, they’ve got all the grounding they need to make a decent go of Need For Speed World.

After Motor City Online EA went on to make The Sims Online (which did marginally better, lasting around five years) before taking the MMO model East with FIFA Online in 2006. Low and behold, nearly five years later, the 2010 iteration of FIFA Online has just gone into beta over here in the west. There's little doubt that EA has done its homework for Need For Speed World, and for the most part, it shows.

Need For Forests

EA isn’t just capitalising on their F2P experience for Need For Speed World though, it’s picking and choosing from the rich tapestry of tracks, driving mechanics and assets that have gone before. In fact, fans of Need For Speed will feel immediately at home since it’s 250-odd kilometres of track are built from the cities of Palmont and Rockport – the same locales of Carbon and Most Wanted.

It also spells the return of the arcade twitch-style driving model with a fresh nitrous injection of persistence, not to mention power-ups more associated with the likes of Mario Kart or (perhaps more fittingly) Bizarre Creations' Blur.

Gameplay – like all good MMOs – starts at the character select screen, or in the case of Need For Speed World, the Safe House. This is your base of operations - where you'll buy and sell cars, install performance tuning kits and prettify your wheels with a revamped (if somewhat limited against the likes of APB) decal editor. Once you've created a driver profile and selected a car from the Tier 1 models available its time to hit the streets. Once spawned you can do one of two things: join your first race by driving to a race marker in the road, or aggravate the resident cops into chasing you around the city in a classic game of Pursuit. More on this in a minute.

The UI will be very familiar to MMO and online racing fans alike. The top of the screen holds your XP bar (EA call it Rep) and icons that call up the map (highlighting events, other players and points of interest), return you to the Safe House, open the social window for adding and interacting with friends (which can also be imported from Facebook) – and more besides.

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