http://www.lotro.com/enReleased in 2007, yearly updates with 4 add-ons up to now, another announced for September this year. 4 Races, human, dwarves, elves and hobbits. 8 or 9 classes (not sure this second).
Free to play since end 2011. They added an item shop, however while playing PvM you do not need to pay any money except for your addons and level areas. There is also another way to get those addons and areas. You can also fullfill deeds which means you kill about 15 monsters and get 5 points for the shop. Next step 30 monsters for 10 points and so on. If you're into grinding, you can easily farm your points and buy addons/areas without investing money. There are also cheap offers on steam or the official website to buy those tho.
Roleplaying is a big part of the game, there are also some official roleplaying servers where you should stick to certain RP rules.
It's not so much a PvP game. You can ofc duel other players. Then there's the Monsterplay, which means you can either join up as an Uruk-Hai or play with your usual char in a closed PvP area. There's no open PvP. I don't know how active Monsterplay is, last time I was there is about 2 years ago, but I had my fun!
Crafting system is quite nice, much better than in World of Warcraft.
There are regularly events over the year, like Summer, Winter Anniversary.
There are of course also raids in the higher levels. The dungeons are harder to master than in most other MMOs and if you got a group of about 6-8 (max 8) then you can play them without to look for other players.
LotRO got a nice housing system, for example you can have your own house and your guild as well.
I really recommend playing LotRO! It's worth the download even if you plan to play rather casually. If you intend to play a lot, I recommend buying a VIP abo however. It's a bit cheaper than WoW I think. I bought myself a lifetime abo 2009 so I'm VIP forever now. ^^
Not my screenshots, dont have it installed on laptop.
