It's more than just $150 to play alpha. -_-
You get $75 of game coins, items, 3 months paid, and 4 day head start. That alone is the cost right there almost. Hate it when people say "$150 to play alpha? Please..." type of crap, because it's actually not the case. You're really only paying about $7 to get into alpha.
Closed beta is still planned for this month as well.
And on the land, you just have to watch for open plots coming up. My guild has got plenty in the last week for their farms, and it will more than likely be this way on release too. Just because they have 3x the amount in alpha doesn't mean they don't plan that on release servers. Scapes (works for Trion) actually said Alpha is a good representation of what they figure a regular, released server size will be as well, it's just not everyone will be p2p.
Love the watered down expression too. Everyone has their own opinion, however, bet you haven't even played it to get that opinion, based off what you said. Did someone else tell you what to think about it? lol. As for me, the PvP is fun, the skill system is fun, the naval battles are fun, and we're almost at a spot to siege castles and build our own too, and I'm sure that will be fun. Oh yeah, and pirating other ships is a blast!