Guild Wars 2. You have to buy the game to play, but there is no subscription fee. The game will be released on August 28th and it's an absolute joy to play.

Yeah, definitely LotRO. New expansion coming out very soon, too!

They made an annoucement today that it was being delayed until October I believe.

Yeah, definitely LotRO. New expansion coming out very soon, too!

They made an annoucement today that it was being delayed until October I believe.

It's still soon :P Not very soon, but soon.

Big LotRO fan. Also DDO, although with all the special events in LotRO, I'm afraid I'm neglecting it...a lot.

You can play WOW free until level 20. I'm also a big fan of SWTOR.

Guild Wars 2 without a doubt. I have played LOTRO (lifetime member) for many years and although I love the lore, the game is not a shadow of GW2...sadly. It is graphically inferior and the inclusion of the "real money shop" is more and more prevalent and annoying. The game has become a grind with very little end content.

I've also played SWTOR, WOW, Dark Age of Conan, Evercrack, Asheron's Call, DDO, Demise, The previous Star Wars MMO (cant recall its name) and GW2 is the game that brought a very jade gamer back into gaming. I literally just wander around exploring and trying things out. I have swum around the ocean for hours and wandered around looking at all the views and trying out all the new things.

There are so many good touches in the game. You can portal from area to area easily once you discover them. You get xp for exploring, for crafting, for looking at views (and the game is beautiful), for taking part in events, for PvP. You get all sorts of rewards and skills and it feels like I am constantly receiving or finding new stuff. Inventory is helped by being able to instantly send crafting items to your bank or to salvage items to turn them into crafting items. You can also sell all your junk with one click and pick up mail anywhere in the world. Events are an awesome thing (like in the Rift), where out of th eblue an event happens and you are alerted and can join in or not as you feel. Its amazing seeing hordes of people pile into the event (which scales accordingly) and the pyrotechnics are a sight to behold as a huge mob rears out from among us (and some are massive).

Levelling feels almost effortless and your skills are tied to your weapons and you can have almost all your skills by level 10 and you can get a good idea if you like the character or not. From then on you get traits and skill points and gear to keep you interested. Crafting is fun and the stuff I've made is actually worth making and has replaced the kit I'm wearing AND it looks good! You can also dye any new gear on the fly anywhere in the world for no cost. Its apparently got a cash shop for cosmetics and temporary boosters (and I believe extra char slots), but to be honest, you can play the full game without spending anything beyond your initial purchase. Plays very smoothly in High on my antiquated PC and PvP was a hell of a lot of fun... seeing catapults and balista and cannons attacking a keep was incredible.

Basically, they seem to have gone around all the MMOs and thought "what p1sses me off about this and how can I get around it". there are no quest logs, no quests, just people who you can help or not. Or you can just explore and find stuff or you can just craft. Even remote and forgotten mobs are worth fighting as they have more XP the longer they've been on the map. You also get XP 9lots) for rezzing people which is nice.

Anyways... time I loaded it and tried out a ranger...