The Lord of the Rings Online Free-to-Play Preview

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Written by BuckGB on August 7th, 2010

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Jumping right in as a normal player without any cash to their name, the game appears completely there. This isn't a free trial, or even a severely limited version of the subscriber's game, this is the real thing. Theoretically you could play for weeks without spending a single coin. It really boggles my mind that a game so polished and honed to perfection during three years' worth of patches/improvements is just going to be given away.

The locations on offer on the freeplay covers all the content available up until the first expansion pack, which in Middle-Earth terms is the land of Eriador. The Shire is available, as is the likes of Bree, Rivendell, Weathertop, The Misty Mountains and the mini-Mordor that is the Witch-King's home of Angmar. The Mines of Moria was/is a separate paid expansion, so if you join now you still won't get that for free, but that still leaves a lot of content to be explored. For free.

There are restrictions to this freedom, but nothing that will impede progress or fun, and very little that will give paying players a significant leg-up, which can be the bane of micro-transaction-based gameplay.

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