[quote name='warreni']I really disagree with this. It's a common criticism levelled against F2P MMOs and it may be true of some, but I really don't see it for LOTRO. In fairness, I am not "starting from zero" because I didn't start an account without having any paid content: I bought Shadows of Angmar and Mines of Moria long before the F2P announcement was made, although it was that development which prompted me to install SoA. However, what I've seen is that there are hundreds of hours of free content available. The epic storyline content does not require any payment, and I've been going through quests with a single character, an elven champion, and I'm still doing "prologue" quests after putting 50-odd hours into the game over the course of several months. Maybe I'm not as obsessive as the average MMO player, but I find that an excellent value and I wouldn't consider it to be an "extended trial".
(This is somewhat OT, but I expect that if STO ends up converting to F2P, it may be a similar model. I don't know much about it, but if there are really weekly updates right now, Cryptic will probably slow the rate of expansion content production and produce episode packs or something similar.)
I think there's a lot of value to be had from DDO as well, although I found I wasn't as interested in the fiction once I got out of the base area as I was in LOTRO. That may just be a personal preference.[/QUOTE]
Not sure why it took you 50 hours to do what takes a couple of days on average. The point is that stuff past lvl 20ish (aka lone lands which is the first none noobie zone) costs money to unlock the quest pack. Also someone did some studies and for all quests and unlocks for mines of moria itself, it costs about 150 dollars under a f2p sub.
I'm not saying or referencing what is right or wrong, there really no reason to say that lotro is free when it really isnt. For those who wonder what you get for a f2p sub please refer to this link:
http://www.lotro.com/free.php?