I remember being introduced to 3DS Max in school and looking for some piece of software that would let me keep on trying 3D modeling at home. I found Nendo, and had a lot of fun with it, but it always felt pretty limited. I remember Mirai as always being labeled "coming soon" for as long as I watched. I found Blender sometime around then, but I remember a lot of features being locked behind the shareware lock, and I think that it didn't work correctly on my GPU at the time (integrated into my SiS 530 motherboard chipset, then later, a Voodoo5 that may have worked...hard to remember now).
I ran into Wings3D a number of years after its original development and release. I think it would be fun to get into, next time I've got the urge to do some 3D modeling. Hopefully it's simpler than Blender has become!