Huh, interesting. I may find some time to play this a bit then... that's the problem, there are plenty of other games I want to play and I just don't enjoy typical MMO gameplay.

Anyone know a date when this starts?

I played the LOTRO beta for a bit and found it fun, but I just have no interest in paying a subscription to play a game so I stopped once it was released. I'll definitely be checking this out, and I hope more MMOs go this route in the future.

From a player's point of view - these games first start off by expanding the userbase (which is good). But once that stagnates, it slowly becomes a case of extracting all the revenue you possibly can from the existing player base. And squeezing them tight.

For instance, making all new areas so difficult that you need to buy buffing items from the cash shop. Pretty much SOP in F2P games for content past a certain level (usually the initial level cap)

This never results in good game design, rather design with a focus on extracting revenue. I also believe the communities (quality) of these games end up taking a hit.

I have high hopes for this change. I bought a lifetime subscription for LOTRO when it first game out, but I ended up not playing that much because my friends played WoW and I couldn't handle two MMOs at the same time.

I keep planning on going back to it because it's such a great game, but it's one of those situations where you go back and all of the content for your characters is a ghost town. I hope a lot of people will try this game now. I definitely plan on starting again as soon as the free to play change hits so that I can have people to level with.

If you haven't played this game yet, I definitely recommend giving it a try once it's free to play.

ugh! And I just got into this game a month ago and bought a years subscription. Ah well... I'm sure they are nice people at Turbine and can put the money to good use.

IMO this game bombed because there was no PVP in it worth a damn.