You glossed over one of the coolest things you get with VIP, the Subscriber Town Services! You get access to your vault, shared storage, a shop to sell vendor trash, the auction hall, and your wardrobe from ANYWHERE! It makes inventory management so much easier, since you don't have to go back to a town to clear your inventory while questing (or stress out about your loot overflow bag items expiring after 1 hour).

Founder and lifer here, best cash I ever spent

Free-To-Play accounts have access to all zones and content that were released up to 13 Nov 2013. That means almost everything up to Helm's Deep/Level 95 - "almost" because any sub-96 area that was released subsequent to 13 Nov 2013 is not included, such as the Level 40-ish Angle of Mitheithel (the southern part of the Trollshaws) and the Level 20-ish Yondershire (NW of The Shire). That is months of gameplay even if you are Dr. No-life and do nothing for 16 hours a day except play LOTRO, and that's not even considering playing more than one character or doing missions and skirmishes and other fun things in addition to just questing through the available zones and the epic quest lines. (Please do things other than play LOTRO!) An account can become Premium either by having been VIP status at some point in the past or by purchasing anything at all for actual human real-world cash money, such as an expansion or a "starter pack" or LOTRO Points. Once Premium, an account can never drop down to FTP; the benefits are permanent. If a character was never logged in while its account is VIP it will never be able to gain full access to Stable Master swift travel. There are items that can be obtained from Hobbit Gifts or by spending LOTRO Points which will unlock Stable Master swift travel briefly but the only way to gain full access to Stable Master swift travel is to log in a character while the account is VIP. The character only has to log in for a second and the benefit is permanent even if the account drops down to Premium status later. The +30 inventory bag slots for such characters and some other character-specific benefits will also apply permanently if a character is logged in - even for just a second - while an account is at VIP status so even if you don't feel you need all the VIP benefits all the time, go VIP for at least one month and log in each of your characters at least once - even for just a second - so that they'll all get those benefits, even if they're characters on a server that you don't plan to play in a big way because... you never know, I've changed servers a couple of times and currently play regularly on two. Maintaining VIP status provides the account with "rent" of all the post-13 Nov 2013/post-Level 95 content except for whatever the last expansion is at that moment (as I write this, that's Gundabad). Note that access to all this other content is available only for as long as VIP status is maintained, it is "rented" content not "purchased" content. When not VIP and wishing to play quests in a post-13 Nov 2013/post-Level 95 zone, that zone may be purchased in the in-game LOTRO store for LOTRO Points (full expansions can also be purchased for actual human real-world cash money in the LOTRO Market, SSG's web-based store front). Such purchases are added to your account permanently and that content can be accessed regardless of the current account status of VIP, Premium, or FTP. No one but you knows how much or how little money you have available to spend on entertainment activities. If you either can't or simply don't want to spend any money on this game, you can still play it from one end to the other for as long as you like without spending a penny. That said, one month of VIP will give each of your characters big permanent bonuses they can't get any other way and others which will cost a lot of LOTRO Points to obtain otherwise, and the account itself will retain Premium status forever even if you pay for just a single month of VIP. You might find that all the other benefits of VIP status (+500 LOTRO Points per month, 5x faster crafting speed, access to "town services" such as the mail system and your vault and the auction house from anywhere, no durability damage/costs from combat and defeat, access to all content - except whatever is the very latest expansion - the moment it is released, and more) are worth the price and a single month of VIP will help you to make that decision. There were a lot of little errors in this video that aren't really important, just go to that page on the wiki for full details. VotR linked it in the description.

Comedic & Informative, another entertaining tutorial, thank you very much! Sharing on our kin's discord in Gladden!

Thanks so much, just started the game!

Great video thank you

Wow videos left and right!

Great video. Sold me on giving the game a try! Do you have any advice/videos/guides on how best to play the game alone? I don't have any friends who play so I'd be leveling/playing solo.

Love your videos, the game needs this, more info the better and there is a LOT to this game. My main account is VIP has been for almost 10 years, I recently recovered my two original accounts that I played to try the game back when they had free trials prior to f2p , anyway one is zero purchases, never been VIP so it's not premium and this is what I'm going to use as my free to play account so I don't know if I'm going to go VIP one time or not, I really want to keep it free to play as much as possible and I really want to work towards building this account by lotro points which is just a challenge I have you know because my main account I just throw money at it I've been throwing money at it for years and it's got everything every time a new expansion comes out I always get the ultimate fan bundle so whenever I log into a character my bag is already half full of mounts and cosmetics and everything and I just want to play on a free to play account just to experience the game like I did when I first started and didn't have any money 🙃

www.lotro.com/home If you want to Try the Game! Link to main site.

Im Free to Play and already I have two lv 20 characters in less than a week, the game is very interesting, I will probably take the VIP when I have enough LOTRO coins, for now I spent 90 on riding training and I have riding now on both of my characters now ,and Im olanninfg to buy Auction house posibility , thats 90 LOTRO moore , I already have that , you get a few now and then, now you cannot sell anything at all without VIP you can olnt buy

I went to VIP the moment I played the first hour. Why? Because I can get a Mount XD!!!!

Oh me lad, I plead with you, to research making this Playlist into a Merchandise DVD for all to purchase. They're bound to be #1 Hit Sales of the year. 👍👍 & 5⭐ ratings on all your video content, for the detail of information you pass on to us all.

I’m a lifetime member but haven’t played it in years would I be a VIP. I just reinstalled it today to find out, I lost some of my character most likely to a server shutting down at some point

Wish you could still get founders by redeeming an old code xD Like I still have lotro exclusive special edition sealed in plastic still xD Not worth opening but i might have if i could get founders ;)

👍👍☺☺

Oh, so you can indeed simply walk into Mordor?

world chat most be time based or level based, currently level 17 no world chat. also i can ah sell free to play limited 2 or 3

I've always found I gain XP way too fast in MMOs. Can you turn *off* the bonus XP from your VIP account?