User blog:Krieger22/The End Is Finally Here

As the sun sets on the Tri-Cities for the last time, many of us are wondering what to do now that the end of the road has finally arrived for Need for Speed World. While many had expected the game to be shut down anytime during its stagnation between 2013 and 2015, the announcement still came as a shock, especially as the game had shown signs of a potential revival. 3 months were left for the game on the day of that fateful announcement, and now those 3 months are up. 5 years is a long time for any game, yet it seems to have passed in an instant in hindsight.

World could have been so much more than what it turned out to be. From the Lower Rockport East Side to what lay beyond the Rockport Turnpike, from unreleased cars to performance parts that were only released with less than a month for the game to go, many grand plans for the game never came to fruition, or did so too late. Whether it was due to greed, malice, shortsightedness or simple stupidity, it no longer matters.

But despite what World could have been, it still was much more than the sum of its parts for many of us. We all found friends that we could count as close as those we found at school, work or wherever we went in the real world, that we could bond with over discussions of the cars in World and their real world counterparts instead of mindless small talk. We pumped fists in joy after winning races with seemingly impossible odds, ground teeth after our cars were sent tumbling backwards by a charging Rhino, sighed breaths of relief after a well-timed Emergency Evade got us out of a tight spot. These friends and memories will certainly remain with us until the day our memories fail us, not to mention all of the screenshots and videos made of ourselves playing World, be it with friends or random players met via matchmaking.

Many of us further developed our interests in cars via World, or found new ways of expressing it, be it carving the perfect racing line across the streets of the Tri-Cities, leaving a trail of wrecked Palmont Police Department police cars behind us, or creating unique vinyl designs we could truly call our own. In search of inspiration to make our cars stand out from the crowd, we immersed ourselves in a multitude of car subcultures, searching for muses or replicating the apples of our eyes. From rally cars to cars that wouldn't seem out of place at a turn-of-the-millenium Hot Import Nights event, World hosted them all. Despite Sturgeon's Revelation being in full force (some of my own car designs and driving included), World was ultimately richer for it.

World's closure marks the end of an era. In a time where the Need for Speed franchise tried to redefine itself again and again, World remained the most tangible link to the childhoods of many of its players. EAGL engine like Black Box's games? Check. Car list with lots of import tuners? Check. Familiar game world? Check. Police? Check. Car upgrading and customisation? Check. It ticked most, if not all of the boxes Black Box's previous games did. Even if the way things were meant that World would only get new cars and related content via recycled content from other Need for Speed games, us players wouldn't have wanted it any other way. We didn't care if they were less detailed versions of cars from other Need for Speed games, we just wanted to drive them. Fast.

With World's closure comes the end of Black Box's most tangible imprint on the Need for Speed series. While Black Box staff have been involved with all of the Need for Speed games after the release of Undercover, their influence is moderated by development team members from other studios. While The Run came chronologically later than World, World was actively developed until 2013, be it under the Black Box name or as QuickLime Games, all of it done the way the people at Black Box saw fit. With the dissolution of QuickLime Games, the various development team members went their separate ways, with some striking out on their own outside the industry, joining other EA game studios, moving to other EA divisions or leaving for game studios outside the EA umbrella. So do take a closer look at the credits of the game you just finished, there's always a chance someone from Black Box might be in it.

And perhaps World helped sow the seeds for a new era of Need for Speed games. The popularity of car customisation in World cannot be denied, and Ghost Games appears to have taken that to heart. However, Ghost Games' community feedback efforts have left out many who were active on the Need for Speed or World communities during World's early days or throughout its run, be they on the official forums or fan communities. While EA's social strategy now focuses on feedback via social media instead of game forums for the most part, I can't help but feel that the upcoming reboot will be poorer for it, considering how disorganised social media can be, especially when in comparison with forums. And while Black Box has been deservedly criticised for dragging their feet when it came to fixing things in World, at least they did so on occasion, something I can't say about Ghost Games with Rivals.

In closing, I'd like to thank the other administrators of the Need for Speed World wiki, active or inactive, namely Kutski, LeMansRacer, CCMurf Punk and Ochristi. The wiki wouldn't have gotten where it is now without their efforts. The various editors, named or anonymous, who helped contribute to the wiki have helped significantly as well. The fine folks at World Garage, who were the first to show me that the World community, or at least part of it, was worth being a part of, deserve much credit as well. Those still remaining towards the end on the official World forums deserve some recognition as well, if only for coming up with various antics to break the tedium of #FarmingToTheEnd.

While World wiki activity is probably going to slow to a crawl, if not stop entirely after World's final sunset, I still will be active on the main Need for Speed wiki, as well as on World Garage (although business has been slow there for quite a while). If you wish to, you can follow me on Twitter at @FSKrieger22, although I've been somewhat less active there since I got busier. And got better at keeping the crazy inside my head.

This is Krieger22 signing off. Perhaps we will meet again sometime at another digital racers' paradise, but until then, so long, and thanks for all the fish.