The month of December has come and gone, taking 2010 with it. Some say good riddance, some look back fondly, but no matter how you slice it, that puppy’s behind us and we’re all moving forward to 2011. For the team here at MMORPG.com, we’ve just got one tiny loose thread to tie up before we officially start the new year: We have to announce the winners of the 2010 MMORPG.com Reader’s Choice Awards!

This year, our categories were: Game of the Year, New Game of the Year, Most Innovative, Most Improved, Best F2P, Favorite Company, Biggest News Story, Most Anticipated, and the newest, and most dubious, addition to our prizes, Biggest Disappointment.

Best F2P MMO

Like it or not, the “Free 2 Play” market is growing here in North America. When the business model was first introduced, F2P games were fairly well limited to games imported from the east. Today, however, the market has grown to include not only F2P games that were built here in the West, but also games that were born originally with a subscription fee. As a result, we had a diverse array of nominees when we put together voting for the 2010 Reader’s Choice Award for Best F2P Game.

The voting broke down as such:

Surprising or not, Lord of the Rings Online’s landslide victory in this category speaks volumes for the Turbine spin on F2P, which has become known as the “Freemium” model allowing players to pay for a subscription while those who don’t want to invest that way are able to play some content for free and pick and choose their paid goodies a-la-carte.

Congratulations to the team at Turbine for their win.