Runes of Magic is a nice play if you don't want to pay (or wish to choose when to pay), but I found it hard to play after a few hours at a time. It's got nice character customisation (you can have a slightly animé look, or you can be more "traditional" with it), and the gameplay is there.
Age of Conan, for me, had an amazing community, but the game just lost my interest quickly. There were still bugs, and I found the day/night system a bit annoying.
Guild Wars? Nah, sorry. Confusing, poor graphics (compared to more recent/more "expensive" MMOs), and no sense of multiplayer outside of cities.
LotRO? Yes, nice game. But as was said before, it descends to very basic/very simple questing very quickly, and it's also quite a daunting game. I do miss my characters, ofc, as visually one of them was very nice. I might pick up the 30 day version just to give it an unrestricted spin. The community is receptive, and the game world is well established. You have to remember that it primarily takes after the books, not the film. Places will look different, as will characters.
WoW? Unless you can honestly put the time in, I'd say no. WoW's one of those games, for me, where if you slip up, it consumes your life. You try to quit, but 3 days later you're installing it again because you accidentally came across info on the new patch coming in 2 months, or the next expansion (I bet Cataclysm has done this for a lot of players who quit). The community is often piss-poor (see MMO Champion for details), the graphics aren't amazing, but once you find yourself a guild or a channel to hang out in, you just enjoy the game a thousand times more. It's simple to get a grip of the basics, but to master some classes can be quite hard.
Tried D&DO, RF Online, Archlord, FFXI (rubbish!) and some others. LotRO, RoM and WoW are the only ones I'd consider playing. Wouldn't mind trying WAR though.
