Just what does it mean when Lord of the Rings Online said that they were going free-to-play? We decided to find out!

Much like DDO, free-to-play players can actually earn Turbine Points to use in the store without having to pay for them. Where Lord of the Rings Online differs from DDO, however, is that, instead of earning Turbine Points through gaining faction reputation, as in DDO, players can earn Turbine Points through LOTRO's Deed system. Thus, by stomping baddies to get monster-slayer deeds, or by finding landmarks for exploration deeds, we got little morsels of Turbine Points; five points for minor deed achievements, like completing the first stage of a monster-slayer deed, and around ten points for bigger achievements.

We noted earlier that up to about level 20, content in Lord of the Rings Online was fairly well-spread out, and even with the certain limitations of playing on a free account, there weren't too many 'walls' where we felt it was absolutely necessary to make a purchase. After level 20, however, when we made our way into the Lone-lands to continue both our epic quest line and get some new leveling content, we unfortunately discovered that much of the content beyond Bree was off-limits until we purchased the quest pack for almost all of our accumulated Turbine Points (for a few of us who hadn't finished all of the available deeds, we were short points).

As well, in order to follow the epic quest line, players will find that they will need to gain a specific reputation status with Eglain before they continue. Unfortunately, without access to the Lone-lands quest pack (which gives Eglain reputation), we found ourselves left to kill orcs and goblins in order to gain this reputation. Earning Turbine Points through additional deeds was locked as well, at least until we unlocked the quest-pack. Finally, without any quests available to us in the area, we spent most of our days popping in and out of the new lower-scaled skirmishes and instances to get much of our leveling done. Here, however, we ended up with piles and piles of skirmish marks of all kinds, but with the closest armor set being purchasable at level 30 (and no unique drops coming from the new lower-scaled instances), it was difficult to find things to look forward to in the immediate future.

In the end, we decided to backtrack to complete all of the deeds available within the start zones in order to scrape together the necessary amount of Turbine Points needed to unlock the Lone-lands quest pack. Other players have noted that you can actually create new characters on other servers in order to quickly grind out some easy deeds for a few hundred extra Turbine Points.

Ultimately, however, Lord of the Rings Online going free-to-play still remains a very smart move by Turbine, to give more options to players in how they approach their MMO. It is quite easy for players to complain about being unable to access everything without having to pay a cent, but after having so much fun getting to level 20, it's really not hard at all to justify spending a mere few dollars (even less if you've accumulated a good amount of Turbine Points from deeds) to access hours and hours of content. If anything, when LOTRO goes free-to-play this fall, you should definitely be there to give it a shot. From there, it's really up to you to decide if you want to subscribe or pay a few dollars for tons of content, or even to make it through on the free-to-play side. Can you think of any other triple-A MMORPG that offers this many options?