Unlike talents in WoW, TP in ROM are a sort of currency used to pay for upgrades to skills. You get 10% of any exp you earn as TP, with an extra bundle each time you level up. The cost to train each upgrade goes up with each level, so you can afford to max a few key skills, keep a larger number within a rank or two, or keep just about everything within half a dozen levels of the top. Each of your two classes has a separate TP pool and you're free to pursue different strategies with each of them.
Given the full refund, I took the opportunity to divert TP from less used spells - my Druid now maxes three key DPS spells and spends the rest of the TP on keeping some heals up to par, while the Rogue has a more complicated rotation that includes half a dozen attacks and a variety of useful passive bonuses. Apparently you can continue to gain TP after hitting the level cap, offering a form of alternate advancement and eventually getting all the upgrades to all the skills. Though there are cash store items to gain more TP and/or reset your current choices (it is a free to play game after all), none of the choices are really irreversible since you can eventually gain more.
Overall, though I can see the potential for grind, it is also an interesting system. The other thing that I like about it is that it avoids some of the advance study that goes into planning out a spec in other games, because you can upgrade your spells as you use them. You might, as I did, end up with a few points sunk in spells that you don't end up using, or without the points to fully upgade a new ability at the level you receive it. In the long run, though, it's much less of a learning curve than we see with alternate advancement systems in other games, where you need prebuilt builds from the forums or extended reseach before you start to make sure you don't make ineffective choices.