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I dont know if this game has come up, but if you are looking for a good MMO that is free to play, this one seems pretty darn good.

There are four races with quite a few class selections (similar to wow). I dont think they have a level cap. You cap out when you cant level off of anything in the game, but they keep releasing more expansions which give you higher and higher level stuff. The highest character I have seen was lvl 67 I think. There are tons of professions, items, crafting, quests, dungeons, etc etc etc. Lots of fluff material as well. You can have outfits that overlay your actual equipment, so you can look cool and still have good gear on. You can move into a neighborhood and buy your own house. There are events that happen in your home's town that you can participate in. Your kinship (guild) can buy a sort of guildhall/meetinghall thing that you can all outfit with stuff like trophies and hang out and what not.

From what I understand, the game was pay-to-play but they made it free with a ton of content that you have to pay for. So, you can play free and pay for the stuff you want. I like this over the pay-to-play games because you will never feel like you need to play the game in order to get use out of the 15$ monthly fee. This keeps people from getting addicted, which keeps people SANE AND NORMAL, which probably makes for a better playing experience.

I play on Riddermark, name is Stukoff - human captain.

DISCUSS!

I play LOTRO as well. Turbine know how to make a good casual MMO with a fair payment system. They have also mastered the fine balance between payment, reward and effort (few MMOs have done this). I personally have a VIP account (15 bucks is not much money for me) but at turbine’s other MMO DDO, I have a premium account (DDO has less stuff restricted to subscription/paying player’s than LOTRO so premium is the better deal).

One thing I must praise is the balance of items. Quest rewards in general are extremely useful and monsters actually drop useful junk (unlike WoW and other MMOs where monsters only drop vendor trash). The new daily task system for cashing in trophies makes rep grinding even easier . It is also good to see an MMO where the crafting skills can give a player decent items without having to hit level cap or grind mats for weeks (I’m looking at you WoW).

It’s also good to see an MMO that a) has a story and b) the story doesn’t suck (I’m looking at you WoW). I definitely recommend LOTRO to anyone.