Drift City
Drift City is a free-to-play 3D racing MMORPG that tries something few online games attempt, it merges arcade driving with mission-based MMO progression inside a shared, persistent world.
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Publisher: GamesCampus Playerbase: Low Type: F2P MMORPG Release Date: September 05, 2007 Shut Down Date: March 21, 2017 PvP: Real-time Races /Lap Time Battles / Crew Battles Pros: +A sizable persistent world to cruise between activities. +Stylish anime-inspired cel-shaded visuals. +Plenty of missions and optional tasks to grind through. +Lots of vehicles and parts to collect and tune. Cons: -Cash shop advantages can tilt progression. -Mission structure can start to feel samey. -Tutorial cannot be skipped. |
Drift City Overview
Drift City blends open-world driving with MMO-style questing, turning your car into both your “character” and your main tool for progression. You pick from a range of vehicles, then head out into a persistent map built around four distinct cities, each with its own atmosphere and road layout. Instead of sitting in menus between races, you spend a lot of time actually driving to objectives, meeting NPCs, and chaining tasks together as you work through the game’s storyline and side content.
Moment to moment, it plays like an arcade racer with extra layers. Drifting, speeding, weaving through traffic, and even going the wrong way are encouraged because reckless driving feeds the Booster Gauge. Once filled, you can trigger a short burst of speed, and keeping the combo going can also pay out random item drops. When you want something more structured, there are timed group activities where you team with up to three other players to clear objectives and take down boss encounters for a chance at better parts. If you prefer competition, the PvP modes focus on direct races and time-based challenges, and crews add a guild-like layer where groups fight for bragging rights and rewards.
Drift City Key Features
- RPG & Racing Game In One – a hybrid that mixes MMO progression and mission loops with arcade-style driving and racing.
- Large Open World – roam across four themed cities, following main tasks, picking up side missions, or simply cruising and exploring.
- Combo System – build Booster faster by drifting and driving aggressively, then earn random rewards for strong combo chains.
- Real-time Races – jump into competitive races designed to keep players on comparable footing regardless of level.
- Party Dungeons – tackle timed instanced challenges with up to three other drivers, ending in boss fights and loot opportunities.
Drift City Screenshots
Drift City Featured Video
Drift City Review
Drift City is an anime-styled 3D online driving MMO that aims to sit between a casual racer and a traditional MMORPG. It officially launched on September 5, 2007, and it was developed by NPluto. The game’s publishing history is a bit unusual, it started out under Ijji and later moved to GamesCampus, which handled the North American and European service beginning in 2010.
The setting leans into light sci-fi. The action takes place on Mittron Island, a near-future hub that boomed after the discovery of Mittron, a cleaner fuel source. That prosperity is threatened by HUVs (High-Tech Unmanned Vehicles), which push the island’s government organization, OMD (Organization for Mittron Development), to recruit elite drivers to fight back. Your role is essentially a contractor driver, chasing upgrades and reputation while doing OMD’s dirty work across the island.
Choosing Your Starter Ride
Character creation is present, but it is more cosmetic than anything else. You select from a small set of preset avatars, then the game funnels you into a mandatory tutorial that introduces basic driving, drifting, and Boost usage. The onboarding does its job, but it is also rigid, you must finish it, and it cannot be skipped even if you are making an alternate character. Once completed, you pick one of four beginner cars, each tuned differently across top speed, acceleration, durability, and booster strength, which gives at least a small sense of identity early on.
The Driver Dome Hub
After your first selection, you arrive at the Driver Dome, a central hub that functions like an MMO town condensed into one facility. It is where you manage your Garage, browse the Parts Shop, interact with the Auction House, and purchase new cars at the Dealership. Two areas stand out mechanically. The Battle Zone serves as the PvP gateway, letting you queue into competitive modes, while the Crew Center supports the game’s guild system, including channel-based crew battles that can translate into steady economic benefits.
Four Cities, Four Flavors
The persistent world is divided into four cities: Moon Palace, Koinonia, Cras, and Oros. They are distinct enough visually and structurally to keep travel from blurring together. Moon Palace, for instance, feels like a coastal metro area with broad roads and a cleaner look, while Oros swaps that for desert terrain and points of interest like the space center and the restricted Area 71 military site. The cel-shaded presentation sells the anime tone well, and the soundtrack keeps things upbeat without becoming too distracting during longer mission chains.
Controls are straightforward for a PC racer. You steer with WASD, drift with Shift, and trigger Boost with Ctrl after filling the gauge. The UI is clean and readable, and while there are extra keybinds for things like signals, most players will focus on the essentials, steering, drift control, and timing your Boost to keep momentum through corners and traffic.
Progression Through Missions
Where Drift City separates itself from typical lobby racers is how much of your time is spent doing RPG-style tasks in the world. Missions and side quests provide Mito (the in-game currency) plus items such as parts, coupons tied to vehicles, and temporary buffs. Progression naturally pushes you from the starting area in Moon Palace toward later cities as you complete objectives, creating a steady sense of forward movement.
It also adds a light resource management layer through fuel. Driving consumes Mittron, and you need to refuel at charging stations using Mito. It is not overly complex, but it does make the world feel more “alive” than a pure race queue system, and it gives the economy a constant sink.
For group-focused content, Drift City offers Undercity (party dungeons) and Rush Time (raid-like boss encounters), both supporting up to four players. Undercity revolves around clearing objectives under a timer before facing a boss HUV, while Rush Time accelerates straight into a tougher boss fight where rewards hinge on successful hits, speed of completion, and, notably, who lands the finishing blow.
Risky Driving Pays Off
A core hook is how the game incentivizes aggressive driving. Drifting, maintaining speed, squeezing through traffic, driving into oncoming lanes, and scoring near misses all feed your combo and accelerate Booster gain. In practice, this encourages players to treat regular travel like a scoring run rather than a commute between NPCs. When you manage long combo strings, the game can spit out random rewards, ranging from quick-use speed boosts to higher-grade parts, which adds a slot-machine style excitement to simply moving around the map.
PvP and Crew Competition
The PvP side is primarily accessed through the Battle Zone and the Crew Center. Battle Zone acts as a lobby browser where players join races and time-based modes. Standard races are the obvious draw, but lap time battles and “real match” battles add variety. The real match concept is especially important for fairness, it has players race using the same car model, which reduces the gap between new players and veterans with optimized builds.
Crew battles add a more MMO-like layer of rivalry. Crews can challenge for control of channels, but participation comes with a cost, members must purchase challenge coupons from the Parts Shop, and only up to eight players per crew per channel can take part. Winning requires beating the defending crew twice consecutively, and the rewards are meaningful, the new defending crew receives a percentage of Mittron charging fees and can take randomly selected parts from the defeated crew, giving the system both prestige and tangible stakes.
Cash Shop Pressure
The biggest drawback is how strongly monetization can affect performance and pace. Drift City’s item shop allows players to purchase powerful parts, upgrades, and even better cars, which can make progression feel uneven when you are trying to keep up through normal play. It is still possible to play without spending money, but the time requirement rises noticeably, especially if you want to compete consistently against players who invest in the shop. A more restrained cash shop would have gone a long way toward keeping the game’s competitive and collection-driven systems feeling purely skill and effort based.
Closing Thoughts
Drift City remains a memorable example of how well racing mechanics can slot into MMO structure when the world design supports it. The cel-shaded visuals, approachable controls, and constant stream of missions make it easy to settle into, and the combo-driven Booster system adds personality to even routine travel. Its main weakness is the pay-to-win lean that can undermine long-term balance, but as a concept and as a play experience, it delivered a distinct style of online racing that few games have matched.
Drift City Links
Drift City Official Site
Drift City Developer Page
Drift City Wikipedia Page
Drift City Wikia
Drift City System Requirements
Minimum Requirements:
Operating System: Windows XP/ Vista / 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 (64 bit)
CPU: Pentium 4 1.8 GHz
RAM: 256 MB RAM
Video Card: 64 MB graphics card
Hard Disk Space: 1 GB available space
Recommended Requirements:
Operating System: Windows XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 (64 bit)
CPU: Pentium 4 2.4 GHz or better
RAM: 1 GB RAM or more
Video Card: 256 MB graphics card or better
Hard Disk Space: 1 GB or more available space
Drift City Music & Soundtrack
Drift City Additional Information
Developer: NPluto
Publisher: GamesCampus
Game Engine: GameBryo
Original Release Date: September 05, 2007
Shut Down Date: March 21, 2017 (GamesCampus)
Development History / Background:
Drift City was created by South Korean developer NPluto and originally launched in 2007 under Ijji. Publishing rights for the North American and European service later shifted to GamesCampus in 2010. Set on the futuristic Mittron Island, the game’s story revolves around the discovery of Mittron, a cleaner fuel source that helps build a modern metropolis, and the rise of hostile HUVs that force OMD to enlist top drivers. Drift City’s identity comes from combining racing with MMORPG structure, and it also featured sponsorship ties with automotive brands such as Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler.