I played the game when it launched, but like all MMOs except for Eve, my interest quickly waned once my friends moved back to WoW.
I was curious about the relaunch, and downloaded the client and found that I could actually log in with my old account. Since I had once paid for it, I had several things unlocked from the start (no god cap, more character slots and so forth), but found that, to my disappointment, many of the things that I had earned (that would have netted me Turbine points otherwise) did not count.
Basically, the game you can play for free is roughly the same as the game at launch. The level cap is at 50 and you seem to be restricted to the earlier content. All this stuff can be unlocked as you play of course, as simply playing the game will inevitably net you points along the way. Of course, if you don't want to resort to a lot of grinding, I suspect that turbine point purchases will quickly become an appealing prospect for some.
I was surprised to find that many of the things one could purchase were, in fact, quite powerful. Starting at level 7 for example, a player can purchase 10 point upgrades to any of the stats. Considering my level 37 Champion's highest stat is "Might" and he has a mere 240 points in said stat (which, for the record, is fairly close to the maximum amount one could expect to see in said stat at that class and level), this seems like a fairly powerful upgrade. Of course, at a price tag of right around five bucks (if I am converting the Turbine space bux into earth monies correctly), I guess only the wealthy are likely to abuse it, and that is assuming there is no cap on how many such upgrades you can purchase.
I am also not aware if the Turbine points one earns on a character are transferable to another on the same account. Given that the game seems to hand out points for deed completions and the occasional quest, I would expect the average player would earn no more than 20 or 30 points in a sitting, which translates into precisely nothing in the store.
Of course, the game appears to be entirely playable without purchasing anything, but I would have to wonder if some of the limitations one can only get around by paying will be annoying or not. A "premium" character (someone who once paid a subscription fee I suppose) gets a full five bags, while a free player, by default, only gets 3, meaning a lot more trips to vendors to and whatnot to get rid of excess loot. There is also a gold cap, but I'm not sure precisely how restrictive said cap is. Additionally, as you play, you earn destiny points which can be used to give a character temporary bonuses (faster movement speed, additional "rested" experience and so forth), but this feature is locked by default for free players. I'm sure there are other bits that are walled off that I didn't notice, but these will likely be the most annoying.
On the plus side, they revised the intro quest lines a bit making for a more streamlined introduction to the game and your chosen class. Experience gains also seem to be greatly accelerated. When I played the game nearly three years ago, getting to level 20 took several sittings. Today, when testing, I managed to do the same in a few hours. The downside to all this was that my quest log seemed to get a bit littered with quests that were trivial and I no longer naturally gained many of the deeds I would have expected. The actual impact of this is that a player will probably be forced to hang around a given area where there isn't much experience to be had in order to keep up with deed progression or crafting skills.
Of course, the most obvious impact of this move is that the starting area is absolutely packed with people. In fact, I don't believe I saw so many players even when the game was new.
All in all, I would say it is worth a look if your interested. LOTRO isn't substantially different than WoW in most ways but the different narrative and aesthetic might be enough to at least make a visit worthwhile for a WoW veteran. I'm sure that, if I kept playing the game for long, I would simply continue giving Turbine ten bucks a month in exchange for the various upgrades they seem keen to hand out for such loyalty, but given how quickly I grow bored in such games without friends to keep me interested, I suppose this depends mostly on if anyone I know wants to join me.