Joined a server (Live to Cruise), and couldn't do anything because I did not have a License/Money. This had nothing to with not owning the game, as I do own the game and have raced a few other races/servers/tracks/cars online.

So can anyone point me to a guide explaining this in a bit of detail. I looked at the manual, but didn't see it mentioned there.

I think the general idea was, as you get/earn experience, you can drive faster cars by purchasing a license via game-money?

Quote from Takenover83 :

I think the general idea was, as you get/earn experience, you can drive faster cars by purchasing a license via game-money?

Yes, that's the way it works. You can probably find more information on the Live To Cruise site, but I don't know what the address is. This is generally the way Cruise servers work. If I remember correctly, every time you complete a lap on the "circuit" - or travel a lap's distance, doesn't matter if you actually cross the finish line or whatever, you can keep driving around in circles if you want - you get a few license points. A small message will be displayed somewhere in the upper corners of your screen telling you how many points you've got so far. If you want to drive the really fast cars you'll have to spend quite some time driving around in the slower ones first. Also, keep in mind that if you go to pits using shift+P when you're not actually in a garage box, points will be deducted.

If you just want to race you can join a "normal" race server.

You have joined something called a cruiser server. The main thing you do on a cruise server... is to cruise around and just relax. As you are driving you get lisence and $. When you have driven for some time you maybe got some lisences and got enough money for buying a car on the server, then usually the command is !buy (car).

But keep in mind, this is a cruise server, and there is a lot of other servers around where you can drive all the cars and on all the tracks. Often are it limited to 1-3 cars on a server, meaning you have 3 different cars to chose from.

So in short - look on the right side of the server name, then you`ll find out what types of cars the server are allowing the user to use. Some servers use a lisence system where you have to get points or to drive a certain amount of distance before allowing you to chose other cars, but most of the server doesn`t have this feature and you can jump right into all cars aviable on the server.

Hope this helped you mate

Found it via google.
http://www.livetocruise.net/

Edit: Thanks for explaining.

I don't play on cruise servers (they are boreing), but from my brief experience with them, the only ones worth driving on is the http://city-driving.co.uk/ ones "[TC] city driving Kyoto" or something. You don't lose money by pitting without parking first. SO much better.