E3 2014 Coverage: Playing World of Speed

June 12, 2014 14:11 ( Articles ) 0

 

We got to check out and have a demo play of World of Speed, the fast-paced free to play online racing MMO title with Stunning AAA HD visuals that was being shown at this year’s E3 for the first time. We were really excited to get our hands on it and this is what we experienced.

Our demo featured a trailer and a test drive on the San Francisco map using both the stock version of a car and an upgraded version so that we could test the difference. There are a wide variety of events, moulds, tracks and car requirements for different objectives and the maps feature different times of day and weather conditions that really add to both the atmosphere and the actual game play itself.

 

   

The team talked about the two forms of customisation that players experience in the game: visual customisation and upgrades. Visual customisation basically allows players to physically modify their vehicles with purely aesthetic and cosmetic purposes, changing everything from paint jobs (matt, gloss and chrome jobs as well as a full spectrum of colours) as well as changing your own livery/insignia that players can identify you by. Players are able to form their own clubs with their own livery and club colours that will be shown on the car to identify players being in the same group, similar to Guilds in MMORPGs. As well as changing physical aspects such as spoilers, hoods and trim there are more subtle options such as being able to change headlights.



None of the cosmetic changes that players can make to their vehicles have any impact on the vehicle’s performance, the reason being that the developers want players to be able to express themselves creatively without being hindered by performance requirements of new components. So often as seen in other racing games players are bottlenecked into choosing stats over style where the top end gear has the same cosmetic appearance and so all later level cars start to look the same, something the developers want to avoid.

Instead players will be able to enhance their vehicles using upgrades, and nonlinear system that is similar to MMO type character building where players are able to put points into various aspects of their vehicle to make them more focused on a different type of play and help enhance team based gameplay such as seen in classic combat MMORPGs where players have their different roles. For example, if you want to be the guy that is always coming in first in a race then you will need to choose upgrades that suit that purpose, whereas if one of your teammates is focusing on being a Blocker then they will have to take suitable upgrades such as being able to take more damage and having fast acceleration to keep their teammate in first, or alternatively you may want to upgrade with drift tires and nitrous oxide to be the person scoring Drift points.

Fortunately players are not stuck to only having a single vehicle with one set of upgrades and they can have multiple builds/loadouts in their garage tuned towards being able to complete different objectives successfully.

If you want to know more about World of Speed, check out our detailed profile by clicking on the "info" button below.

 

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