I played City of Heroes and Dungeons and Dragons Online when they were free and subscription and I'd still recommend both.
The F2P model of CoH is designed to rip you off as much as possible and a lot of stuff is locked but whatcha going to do. DDO is slightly more fair. There is a decent amount of early game for free. You can also buy anything purchased by real money, just by earning achievements in -game. If you grind enough, it is possible to get very far without spending any money.
The prices in DDO are pretty reasonable also.