LoTRO is free-to-play, though. It's zero dollar LoTRO vs. $60 for GW2 (or $25, Black Friday sale price at some places) for the costs up front.
In fact it's even better for LoTRO to have people level up quickly, because the sooner people level up means the sooner people will be stuck without anything to do and have to buy quest packs, etc.
GW2 just has a different mindset in making leveling up not such a chore. It's one of the best qualities of the game, imo, because I just hate leveling.
you can't do much of anything with LoTRO f2p model, though. I only played that, many months ago (just trying to kill time prior to GW2 :\), and I gave up after a week. the things that you are locked out of: skill bar slots, skills, bag slots, all of the things that become necessary so early on to keep you interested.
I was determined to give it maybe 15 levels to see if I liked it--I did like the play in the nooby area where I was, but I just spent too much time grinding--running back and forth to empty my bags--and fiddling with my skills to make them useful, to ever get to a point in the game where I felt like I was on a roll and could enjoy it. So, I hated it and stopped playing.
ToR sucked me in with their free trial--1 week up to level 15, any number of characters. Only thing is that you couldn't guild, couldn't use general chat. Could only whisper and party with people. I was able to play what the game offered, and I dug it enough to plop down $40 and then spend 15/month on a sub, for about 3 months--and I HATE sub-based games.
Now, they are doing the same thing with their F2P. I will probably never log into ToR again, because it basically punishes those who have already paid a shit-load of money to this game and just want to play it at a more relaxed pace (no gear treadmill, no daily HM and all that--even though I enjoyed them). Sucks, I liked playing my Sin, and was really enjoying leveling up and over-gearing my Sentinel (through crafting--oh wait, I can't really craft with F2P either? fuck those clowns)