Like Dungeons and Dragons Online before it, the MMO based in Tolkien’s fantasy world is going free-to-play, waiving the monthly subscription cost entirely. Aside from the costs of premium content or play past level 50, the entire game and its map is available to players new and old at no cost. Warner Brothers announced plans to introduce the new model this Fall, but offer a beta version of the game starting June 16th. For details and downloads on the game, check out its official site.
Read all the details. The current paying individuals and lifetime members aren’t getting shafted through this. It’s impressive how well the D&D project worked for them, and I only see LOTR doing better since it was one of the few MMO’s to actually gain subscriptions throughout its life time during the WoW era.
That said, I’ve never been a huge fan of micro-transaction systems because they can give an unfair advantage to those with the biggest pocketbook. We’ll see how they do it though. Very intriguing.