TRIBES: The Most Influential FPS You (Probably) Never Played [video essay 52:59]

Tribes was an incredible series. I've played every game in the series, but I think it really peaked with Tribes 2. That game was basically perfect. The movement, the gunplay, the vehicles, the maps, all of it was spot on.
- Don’t forget the mods! You didn’t have to download anything, it was all server side. I forgot which mod I played most but you could set up all sorts of sensors, automated turrets, forcefields, etc using models and textures already in the game but repurposed.
  Also, the net code was extremely good, it was very playable even on my 33.6k modem.
  
  I think "Renegades"?

One of the best games ever made. None of the others in the series really had the same fun factor. The mods were amazing. There was a total conversion called TribesRPG and there's still a server up for it. Last time I went in a couple years ago there were only two players just idling.

I loved Tribes. The verticality, the freedom of movement, the timing of slow moving projectiles. It's one of the few multiplayer FPS that I sunk time in to and got quite competent at.
The only other game to scratch the freedom of movement itch in the same way was AVP2, playing as the Alien (wall walking, pouncing across the map, etc) though obviously it didn't have a lot of the same features.
Tribes is so far behind me that I don't remember any of the people, servers, etc that I played on, but I do remember my nick: Guy In The Sky.
As others mentioned... Mods. I frequently played Renegades, but I believe HaVoC was my favourite.
Oh, and PlanetTribes/PlanetStarsiege? F.

Never played the first one, but I was all about Tribes 2 when it came out.
Ascend was pretty good too, but mostly just the skiing mechanic wasn't sloppy because it was built in and not relying on a bug.

Tribes was amazing, especially Shifter.
If anyone used to play on the homelan servers, I was [*HF] Shadow back then.

VGCG
I mostly came into the series at Tribes:Ascend during the beta, but had played a bit of Tribes:Vengeance with friends in the past. This video is a great summary of the mishandling of an amazing series that nothing else comes close to. There are few things more satisfying in gaming as flying at high speed across a map and hitting that blue plate special.
I was excited to see Tribes 3 until I saw it was old Hi-Rez employees running the show. I played a few of the early playtests and decided to hold off on purchasing anything until the game got into a more polished state. I don't know if others doing the same was a contributing factor to development stopping, but by the time I started thinking about checking it out again, they had announced the cancellation of development.
- I had hopes for tribes 3 but I really don't understand the decision to make smaller maps, and scatter little bits of terrain to bump into to halt your speed. Absolutely frustrating.