Now this is surprising…and amaz­ingly gen­er­ous. To cel­e­brate Lotro’s upcom­ing 2^nd birth­day, Code­mas­ters has teamed up with the pop­u­lar Euro­pean game review site/blog Eurogamer to give away 2000…yes TWO THOUSAND free…yes FREE (okie i’ll stop that now) copies of the game (minus Mines of Moria). As you’ll read in the site’s news arti­cle, the first 2000 indi­vid­u­als to claim a key after 2pm GMT on April 24^th will get 30 days’ game time and a dig­i­tal down­load of ‘Shad­ows of Angmar’ totally free!  All you need to do is sign up to Eurogamers’ free com­mu­nity and wait for the time to arrive so you can pounce.

Now I know this is lit­tle more than a huge free trial, and Code­mas­ters only stand to profit from this arrange­ment since at least some of the 2000 will go on to set up paid sub­scrip­tions to the game, but it is rare a com­pany shows this kind of gen­eros­ity these days. Espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the fact that Lord of the Rings Online is doing extremely well, I can­not pro­mote this move enough and thank Code­mas­ters for this oppor­tu­nity for the unini­ti­ated to try out my favourite MMORPG on the market.

[http://​www​.eurogamer​.net/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​2​0​0​0​-​f​r​e​e​-​c​o​p​i​e​s​-​o​f​-​l​o​t​r​o​-​b​l​o​g​-​e​n​try]

…Those in-game events, com­pe­ti­tions and give aways sound intru­ig­ing too…