Lord of the Rings Online Goes Free-To-Play, Doubles Revenue

For those of you who don't know, Lord of the Rings Online, the MMO based on the LotR franchise, recently went free-to-play, subsisting off of micro-transactions, much like Dungeons and Dragons Online before it. Which is appropriate considering that both games were taken over by Turbine games, which reported at GDC Online 2010 that the game (LotRO, not D&DO) has since doubled it's revenue, according to an article over at Joystiq.

The game has gone from a monthly-fee based MMO to a microtransaction model. Apparently this has been massivley succesful for the game, according to Kate Paiz, Executive Producer of the game, "when you tell people you no longer have to pay for it, they come in droves."

Once again, read the full article, with fancy shmancy statistics and numbers, here. What do you think about monthly-fee vs. microtransactions? Are you more likely to check out LotRO now that it's free-to-play?