PSA: Lord of the Rings Online now free to play

I.E. Microtransaction hell or monthly fee.

Horrible.

Just checked the game out myself, seems really awesome actually. Its a lord of the rings themed wow copy with better graphics lol. You don't have to do micro transactions if you don't want.... you get all the good stuff for free anyways.

If its anything like dungeons and dragons online, it'll be great! can't wait to give it a try!

What about those with a lifetime membership?

I recommend MMO fans to try out this game. I played for a couple years after release and don't regret it. Fun game, but like any MMO it can get stale.

Was wondering if Joystiq was gonna mention this, as it's big gaming news. Everyone, seriously check it out. It is a great looking game with indescribable depth. It doesn't really seem like the pay stuff is vital at all. Other than if there's very high level areas you might want access to after playing for several months.

Going FTP kind of kills the chances of ever seeing a Mac client. I've always wanted to try this one too, being a big Tolkien buff.

Figures, my PC dies last week.. and I wanted to try this. >.>

This game was worth the $15 a month before it went F2P. Also, now that they're dropping the radiance system, endgame will be so much better!

I tried it, It's a lot like WoW (or atleast the WoW I played in 2006) But has some more RP stuff and seems to have good Crafting, I'll see if I'll keep playing.

The Shire is free, so even if all I can see for free is the Shire, it still means I get to walk around the Shire.

My only fear is that with it being free, and being a massive Tolkien fan, that I will get addicted beyond what time I can afford to spend playing it.

I have subscribed off and on to LOTRO over the past few years, eventually buying both expansions and completing all the solo content (I get my grouping/raiding fix from WoW, I don't want to deal with it in other games). I logged in last night to see what was available to me as someone automatically upgraded to "Premium", but not spending the money yet for VIP access.

The LOTRO F2P comparison chart (http://www.lotro.com/betasignup/vipchart.html) indicates that a Premium character is limited to 3 bags and 5 gold, but when I logged in I still had all 5 of my bags and 50 gold (and I continued to earn money from quests and mobs as I played). I still had access to all the skirmishes, but again I had bought Siege of Mirkwood. I didn't investigate the limitations to auction and mail.

I was able to start the new Epic quest, but old quests I hadn't yet completed in "old-world" (pre-Moria) zones were blocked to me. It's kind of annoying, since I did buy the original Shadows of Angmar base game and I felt that all of that content should still be available to me. I understand new content like Enedwaith only being available as a purchasable quest pack, or included with VIP status. On the other hand, if all that old content was available to my account, I could level up a bunch of new characters for free. So I can understand it for new characters, I just wish it didn't apply to higher level characters that one can prove already went through the content.

In the end, I will probably just putz around and do random deeds for free, and level a new Runekeeper up to 20, and when I am ready to focus on the game I will pay for a month of VIP status, complete the new Enedwaith zone, and try to level that new Runekeeper up to 50 when I can quest in the expansion zones for free. Or I could run skirmishes on the Runekeeper too if I can't make it all the way to 50. When the Rohan content comes out I will buy another month of VIP status, rinse and repeat. So, pretty much my same modus operandi as before they went F2P, except I can do some limited things in-between.

Ah yes, the ultimate fate of 95% of MMOs not named World of Warcraft

must be popular. i'm only getting 90-100kbps so i won't be able to play until the morrow.

"Turbine will be promoting the game's new business model during this Sunday's episode of Family Guy "

There goes the community...

i just want a few of the free2play games to come out with a mac version

Played the beta way back and that was a decent way to pass a couple of hours. I'll download this just to tool around for $0 and kill some time between other games.

Oh WOW I... still don't care.

Free is always good, but this isn't my thing. There are other free(ish) games that I would find more fun and less taxing on my time.

This is soo cool, can't wait to start playing fo free