Let's rewind the clock back to some 10 years ago.
At the time, the now-defunct Black Box Games was at the helm of the Need for Speed franchise. But around this time, between 2009 and 2010, the job of mainline releases was split between Slightly Mad Studios, who conjured up Shift, and Criterion Games, who came out with Hot Pursuit in 2010.
As Black Box took a back seat, they decided to explore a frontier that they hadn't before, and a genre that was somewhat untouched at the time; a free-to-play, MMO racing game. Sure enough, after several open and closed beta tests, on July 27, 2010, we got Need for Speed: World.
Although not very big at first, World eventually gained a massive player turnover, and has one of the largest and most varied car lists in NFS history, only surpassed by Slightly Mad's very own Shift 2 Unleashed. However, as time went on, World started to decline. Several development studios bouncing t🥂he ball back and forth, the closure of Black Box, the development team not taking appropriate action against cheaters, banning innocent players for seemingly no reason, and the game's rather unfair economy all contributed to the decline.
Just two weeks before the game was supposed to turn five years old, on July 14, 2015, Need for Speed World shut down its servers permanently.
It was extremely unfortunate, especially for people who dedicated a lot 🔥of time (and money) into the game. But where Electronic Arts dropped the ball, the fans picked it up.
It all started weeks after the closure of the servers when Elitepvpers, an NFS modding community, created an offline server mod for the game. While you wouldn't be able to play with friends or other players, the offline server allowed you to play World offline. You could also access every car in the game, customiz☂e them, and drive them 🍰without any restrictions.
The offline server was well-received, but everyone knew that this wasn't it. The modding community seemed to agree, and eventually, fans of the series received word that a fan-made project was underway to revive NFS World and allow plaꦑyers to play it properly again, online and with friends.
Finally, in 2017, the closed beta of Soapbox: Race World was announced. The project's aim was to revive Need for Speed: World the way it once was, with multiple servers, an improved economy, and a thriving community of players, as well as the addition of brand new cars (server-exclusive, t⭕hough), along with removed cars that wer🧔e meant to be in the game at one point.
Fast forward to 2020, and everyone can play Soapbox: Race World. If you dedicated a lot of time into the original game in the past, then you can finally re-live all of those days. Cruising and team escapes with friends? You can do it all again. The multiplayer works 100%, and so do private matches with friends. So if you've longed for the day when you can play Need for Speed: World again, or something along the lines of i💫t, now you can.