Oh... what a good marketing ploy! Offer a little bit of cash (US$ 2,000) and a "chance" to win some of the sponsor prizes, and you could get a few thousand people watching the show. At least the pilot episode (and hopefully, they'll already get hooked by then!).
The race is divided into 2 parts. And teams consists of 2 people. All need to sign up as AXN's member (another good ploy to get members). For the first part, there are roughly 12 clues. You need to find the clues in sponsor websites (another good ploy to expose the sponsors to more people), answer a few questions on TAR. At first, it seems that the 20 fastest teams will be qualified for the race. That said, a few teams created bogus teams just to see what lies ahead and practice racing. Well, for my team, we just browsed the forum (where stupid people post up the answers) and try finding the clues before we actually start the race. Well, all that effort was put to waste... since ALL teams who finished this part qualified for the final part. Cheh...
About 2000 teams qualified for the final part. And all are expected to sign on AT THE SAME TIME. Guess what? It was jammed up! I pity those that have dial-up connections. Anyway, we thought that it was gonna be like part 1. So, we went to a cybercafe, and sit side-by-side to make it easier. It was also required to answer questions based on the pilot episode (see, contestants MUST watch the show). Dissapointingly, only one easy question was asked, and then it brough you into a new window to play a game. The game was similar to "snake and ladders". All you need to do is to press a button to spin the dice. "Ladders" were replaced by FastForwards, and "snakes" was replaced by Yields (where if you land on them, you cannot roll the dice for a few seconds). First person to reach "Pit Stop" wins.
So, obviously.. only one VERY VERY LUCKY team will win. Although we were leading when we reached the game window... after finishing the game, we took a long long time to "update" our status (no doubt due to the high traffic flow). So, we ended up getting 142nd.
Congrats, Jsquare... you lucky fellas! (Tell me if you ACTUALLY got the cash prize!)
By the way, there were suppose to be some consolation prizes from the sponsors (Sony, Air Asia, Caltex). But was never specified what the prizes were, how many prizes there were, nor who got those prizes! (Whoever got any of those prizes, I'd like to know who you are)
Oh, and did I mention what a brilliant marketing gimmick this Online Race was?
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