Originally Posted by
Kittyvicious
To give you further clarification:
LotRO has a very solid foundation when it comes to it being F2P. You get points for doing just about everything possible. The story is obviously awesome, even if it doesn't always make sense based on what you know of the books. The graphics and design are still amazing compared to many games that are far newer. There are a lot of breah taking places in LotRO.
It will be very very hard to never spend any money, but the good news is that if you buy points once, you unlock a lot of features permanently. You go from a free member to a VIP/freemium if memory serves corerctly. It gives you a lot of QOL features that are needed to enjoy any MMO. This includes removing the gold cap, additional bag slots, etc.
It is a better value for content that you get if you can at least spend $30 up front on some points and only play one character. If you are looking to have lots of alts, this will not work without a sub or lots of cash. I will also tell you that Best Buy takes a lot of used merchandise these days, in which the store credit can be used to purchase Turbine Pts with the cards.
So if you have any used junk (mp3 players/games/etc) you can trade them in for some upgrades in LotRO (or other freemium games)