Some of us were luckier than others with pricing, too. When I came back to the game, my old account couldn't be retrieved, and the last expac that came out that I bought for it was MoM.

But at the time I came back, you could get a MoM digital expansion code from anywhere in the world for 10-12$ US on the Net. And Turbine had really good sales on quest packs and other things not long after F2P started - you could pretty much count on regular sales where things were 50-75% off.

That's changed now. I'm happy to see sales for 35% off, because for a long, long time in there it seems the biggest discounts were 20%, and often not on things you actually need to play the game. Still, if you found out about the game say - this past year - I think it's more expensive, or more grindy, whichever way you look at it.