Last October I was getting tired of WoW, but unfortunately there wasn’t much out there that looked like it was going to be a good alternative. WAR was taking it’s sweet time. AoC was being pushed back and back and back. TR was the only thing even looking like it was going to release in 2007.

At the time they made what in retrospect was a colossal mistake. The game wasn’t finished. It was very far from finished. It could have possibly been considered in “alpha” development stage since there was a playable engine, but the game world, the character development, the charater to character and character to environment interaction was problematic, the environment (quest/instance) depth were all very underdeveloped. Some genius in the marketing department figured that a huge beta would drum up future business though. So they took the alpha, slapped a beta label on it and made it available. The easiest way (without having to apply as a beta tester) was to shell out $5 for the pre-order reservation.

The problem was that gamers, especially after the WoW era, expect a polished game. Deliver anything less and there’s sure to be a revolt. A revolt there was. the game flat out sucked, but the developer appeared to be ignoring all warning signs and pushing for a late 2007 release. I, along with thousands of other gamers, stopped playing the game and never bothered to convert the $5 investment into the full game when it was released. Then… in early 2008 I was bored with WoW again. One of the realizations I had after reading the most recent TR news was that for a fairly small sum I could play TR, while pretending it was a FPS. After playing games like Crysis it seemed like a deal. Most single player FPS games nowadays deliver 5-20 hours of total game time for $50. An online environment like TR though would easily delivery 40-50+ for $50. It turns out I was right. TR actually isn’t terrible if you just play through as if it were a throwaway single player FPS game.

The problem is… I forgot to cancel my subscription. So now, 3 months later my $50 has turned into $95. Heh. Well the good news is it was spread out over 3 months and even at $95 it was still a deal.

The one and only thing that I think TR got absolutely right was the epic Bane vs. AFS battles. I made a few quick movies before I shut it down entirely. Still, there are only so many of those before it gets old.

Note the use of Flickr Video!