Welcome to Need for Speed World!

Today the English language beta testing phase of Need for Speed World begins. The team is very, very excited to open the doors of the game to our first batch of testers! Those of you who will join us in the session this weekend will be providing invaluable feedback and data to the development team as we work on stability, scalability and, certainly not least, gameplay.

This beta program is much more than one weekend of play. We'll be running a number of beta events over the next several months, all aimed at testing one or more aspects of the experience. If you didn't get into this round, don't worry, there will be more stages and many, many more invites in the weeks and months ahead. Some expectation setting: these initial rounds are intentionally constrained in terms of features, level progression and content. We are testing and so we need to keep the variables under control to ensure quality data. As the beta program progresses you'll see more content, ways to play and places to see.

Allow me to be wax dramatic for a moment. For me, the most exciting part of launching this game is that it marks the beginning of a journey for both the dev team and you, the players. We will be working together to take the beginnings of an online game and, through your feedback and our development, deliver a kick-ass NFS experience.

As an example of how seriously we take this shared effort, I'd like to announce that we'll be asking you, the NFS community, to model a car for launch. We've seen some of the amazing work you've done with our PC games once they've shipped and we'd like to showcase some of that work in World. Our good friends at Porsche have agreed to give players the chance to model the 959 for inclusion in the game and get credit for their creation. NFSDrew will be posting the details a bit later, so keep an eye out. I can't wait to see what you come up with!

Please provide us lots of feedback, good and bad. Use the bug reporting system on the website, be active in the Need for Speed World forums and help us get it right. We are counting on you!

http://needforspeed.com/web/nfs-na/blogs/need-for-speed-news/-/nfsblogs/1273547