So with all the recent dev blog posts over at needforspeed.com and general hype building created by the beta sign up page being discovered, it seemed that a closed beta was imminent. However in a podcast tonight with John Doyle, the senior producer for WO, it was revealed that this was not the case and that the beta would not begin till into the new year, possibly as late as March. One of the devs, VancouverBlade (Andrew Collins), confirmed that the beta sign up page had been up for testing and was not an legitimate sign up page.

So yes, extra all around! A lot of questions were answered though (including some of my own): I asked if the same customisation options found in NFS:U2 would be found in WO and also how the payment model would pan out, like if we were going to have to pay for cars or just the parts for example. The responses were that we can expect to see the customisation options found in the likes of Carbon (so pretty much inbetween Undercover and NFS:U2 quite neatly!) and that the payment model hadn’t been decided yet. Now, I dont know if this means there is still a chance the game could become pay per month – I personally hope this does happen as even a small token payment monthly and then car part purchase on top for example would still be acceptable and make me feel like I can rely on the games future more – but we’ll have to wait and see.

Awesome point though – turns out a good recently accquired online friend of mine, Kaizeras (who was responsible for some of the best WO sneak preview youtube videos), shunted one of the dev’s unknowingly in one of his videos. That be a pretty decent claim to fame right there in the NFS world!