I play on-and-off. I do have a founder account-for-life on the euro side, and got a life account on Turbine's side, as well, back when the euro/dollar exchange rate was bonkers (since had a few Neverwinter Nights buddies on the American side). Haven't played for a while, though, as I have time issues and currently concentrating on EVE.
The good parts is that the world (not all in it, though) is quite lore-faithful, and there's lots of little bits of joy you likely won't get unless you've read the books. The community varies server-by-server, seems pretty nice on Laurelin when I played actively, though naturally there are RPer drama queen bitch fests, too. Teh athmosphere is great and I like the area design, except a few places where the original areas have been changed (possibly by some intern), causing the textures to stretch. (Many cliffs also suffer from this.)
On the bad side, lots of the game has been nerfed to oblivion. My pet example is the Old Forest, which used to be mildly scary, and unless you knew the area, you could get somewhat lost. Which wasn't bad, unless you got somewhat lost and stumbled into the area with awakened trees in the middle. Now, that could've been "fixed" either by making the trees aggro on damage only, or adding a map. Turbine did both, turning the forest into a bore. The only good part is that if you know what you do, it's completely opposite of Wanoah's notice - many quests can be done at the same time, with minimum running around.