Lord of the Rings Online MMO News, Guides, and Features at Ten Ton Hammer

For those of us who have been playing the Lord of the Rings Online for a while now, F2P has been something of an amusing spectacle. Take your level 65 to West Bree if you need an example of this. Regional channels are flooded with colorful language, and dynamic layers mean you are either elbowing your way through teeming hordes of lowbies or sauntering through a ghost town as though the game were being directed by Sergio Leone. Everyone and their dog is running GB, auction house prices are even more ludicrously-inflated, and nobody can seem to find tin anywhere. But what is it like for these new players taking their first steps into a well-established world and experiencing it all for the first time? There's no better teacher than hands-on experience, so in the interests of research, I made a free-to-play account, joined one of the brand-new servers and rolled a new toon.

To read about this experience, check out our Hands-On with LotRO Free-to-Play and see how F2P compares with VIP.