I agree with Donro and Superslayer.
SWTOR is very good, nice combat, great stories and dialogue and a nice light/dark side choice mechanic. It certainly benefits from being made by the company who produced Mass Effect.
Payment is entirely optional, although I recommend buying something, even if it is the cheapest item as you get preferred status, which comes with some permanent minor yet useful bonuses.
Subscription is possible and is your standard £8/$11~ monthly rate, and it grants you some bonuses, a lot of them cosmetic and some which make your game a little faster (quicker exp, extra crafting slots, monthly gift of premium currency), but overall it doesn't make subscribers massively better than free players. It's probably more noticeable at the end-game, which will take you some time to get to.
Biggest downside to the game is that you're very much stuck in your class. Can only use the specific weapons assigned to your class/subclass, as well as only certain types of armour. Feels a little bit restrictive, but I suppose it stops everyone running around with double-sided lightsabres.
LOTRO is also a good free game. I didn't play it too long as I Intended to play with friends, who then ditched it because they had played before without me, then begged me to join them, and then got bored at repeating the beginning again since we all made new charactera so I could actually play.
The atmosphere of the game is great, the area is massive and it's quite entertaining. Graphics and co trols can be a little bit offputting at first, but for an aged game it really isn't all that bad.
They also have a really lovely system whereby you earn achievements, such as completing missions or killing 100 of an enemy or what have you. Those achievements then reward you with premium currency, whih you could otherwise buy, and which can be used to buy from the store, including the DLC for the game. I personally think that is a great mechanic. Provided you do play lots you can earn the premium content, whih is a great tool to keep you playing and a reward if you enjoy the game.
Bounty Bay Online/Voyage Century Online (BBO is EU, VCO is US)(They are the same game but owned by different companies so I think they update differently) is a fun Age-of-sail MMO where you get a really great freedom to do as you please. You can get ships and choose to set them up for combat, exploration or trade,and then you can do any of that as you see fit.
It features a pretty interesting trade system whereby certain loots/trade items are worth more in specific portsfor short periods of time and players have to cooperate by goig to those ports and publishing the info for others to see.
You can travel from the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic, to North America and the Caribbean, down South America, across the precarious Cape Horn, back North, then across the Pacific to Japan, Korea and China, down the Indian Ocean to visit India and the middle east, down East Africa visiting madagascar, under Cape Town, back north up West Africa and back to the Med.
In short, you can travel the globe. All across the globe are ports to famous cities, roaming pirates and enemy navies.
You can jump off your ship at any of the ports, or even certain zones to explore. You'll visit modest imaginings of some of the classical cities of the world, as well as visiting their monuments. There are fantasy locations too, with plenty of fantasy monsters to boot. A minotaur in Crete, ghosts in the Pyramids of Giza, sea monsters in Atlantis (a visitable location with its own storyline).
There are guilds and guild battles, a number of interesting quests, the ability to join the Empires of the time and fight, trade and explore on their behalf, an interesting crafting system and a fair amount of customisation to character and ship alike.
The game is definitely aged, being 14 years old, but it is a good laugh and plenty of fun with friends.
It's free to play with an item shop that you'll hardly notice. It provides some useful items that make navigating the globe a little easier, but that's all really.
