About the game.
What is Project Torque?
It is a Free 2 Play MMO Racing Game with multiple racing modes, many cars, and modifications such as paints, car parts, and liveries, leveling and crewing.
What game modes?
Arcade Circuit, Simulation Circuit, Drift, Drag, Explore and Thunder Alley (NASCAR)
Crews?
Yes, you can setup or join a crew. Level it up to get extra features and race against other crews to dominate.
When was it released?
2006 as Level R in Japan. Shortly afterward making its ways to North America under the name of Project Torque, Europe as Level R, Russia as Speed Online and Taiwan as Fast Black.
It was shutdown in 2014.
Is it really MMO?
Sort of. MMO can be used loosely to describe games with many players on them.
While there is no freeroam with 1000s of players on, you do connect to a single server within your region along with up to 1000+ other players.
Is it actually Free 2 Play?
Yes. You are not forced into buying anything with real world money.
The Micro-transactions in game allow you to buy things without grinding as well as buying a few exscluisive items.
What happaned to the game in 2014?
Back in the day there were multiple publishers. Most players liked the North American version of the game so played on that rather than their own region's version of the game.
Because of this, the European publisher forced the NA publisher to block none American IP addresses resulting in a massive drop of players. Over the corse of a year, player numbers steadily dropped until the North American version was shut down. Due to people now not liking the European publisher, those numbers dropped too and was shut down.
An attempt was made to get the game back online under the name Heat Online. But due to players not trusting the game publisher anymore, very few played.
Bugs and other issues resulted in the game beiung shut down for good in mid-2014.