There are days when it is difficult to pull yourself away from shopping online. Be it shopping for the next computer that you have to have or the television you ultimately have to upgrade. "Keeping up with the Joneses" is a difficult, costly and time-consuming hobby. Lord of the Rings Online has done just that: they are now offering European users who refer their friends a £5 or 5 € voucher to Amazon.com. This is not available for the Americas, yet, although it may be in due time if this proves to be a successful promotion.

"This new programme allows LOTRO subscribers to receive an Amazon voucher for each friend that they successfully refer ( subject to terms and conditions )."

Lord of the Rings Online has already received awards, has numerous promotions currently active and on top of all of that, is picking up more-and-more steam against all of the other massively multiplayer games. With this, they can only hope to get larger, and that means more fun to be had by all. There is nothing more enticing than getting your friend to play, so stop dilly-dallying and get everyone you know to play with you, already!

Everyone loves variety. That variety may be in smaller doses for some and larger doses for others. Everyone likes change, especially when it's from the creators of one of the most original, awe-inspiring massively multiplayer games currently in the business, EVE Online. Over at their developer's blog they discuss some of the newest changes being made with the upcoming release of Apocrypha.

"We have been observing the current strength scale between players and NPCs with watchful eyes for quite some time now. More often than not, PvE interactions in EVE are quite limited, merely consisting of watching the NPC explode after a few volleys. We are not satisfied with that... That is why for Apocrypha, we are unleashing an ancient race into the universe: the infamous Sleepers, lurking throughout the vast unknowns stretching at the other side of the Wormhole maws. Do not underestimate them, as they will remain radically different from the regular pirate factions you are used to."

If you play EVE, this is some exciting news. The introduction of a completely new race into the story arc brings not only a fresh-side to PvE in the game, but it also forces all of the players to re-think their current strategies in terms of all NPCs. They just never give up on innovation over at CCP Studios, and soon we shall see just what all the hubbub is about.

Everyone likes free things. "Free" generally means "something you might not want to pay for anyway" but Lord of the Rings Online will give you ten free days of play. Starting recently, they have opened their servers up for those who want to try out one of the hottest massively multiplayer games on the market. If that was not enough, then try on their promotion with the gaming communication program Xfire, to offer numerous and awesome prizes to those who play at least a certain amount of hours. The more you play, the more likely you are to win, so if nothing else, give it a try and see how the time flies!

Warhammer Online is getting a serious amount of ink lately. Tomorrow is the 29th, the day they have been touting as a huge day for new characters, new content and a whole new level of play for the game. The Warhammer Herald points out the massive amount of blogs that have been getting hammered with incredibly vague packages. Regardless of what was sent to each one, they are trying their hardest to guess what the message behind these packages might be. You can either try your hand at guessing or simply wait until tomorrow to see what all the ruckus is about!

The New York Comic Convention is huge. Every year, millions come to drool at the seemingly infinite amount of dorky material, be it printed or on video. Comic conventions are starting to become a haven for gaming news and for the gaming industry. Cryptic Studios has decided to take their works in progress over to New York and get some more attention and generate some heat for these games. The schedule goes over exactly when the Star Trek Online people will have floor-time. If you are going to be in the neighborhood from February 6th to the 8th, reserve your ticket and your time now!

Those of you hoping to deck your character out in the latest and greatest gear in World of Warcraft only have a small amount of time to prepare: Blizzard has been teasing and tantalizing us about it and it is enough to drive a sane massively multiplayer gamer totally bonkers. Although they will not be available until 3.1 goes live on the servers, they are still something to look at and they are still nothing but impressive. Check out the YouTube video and prepare, young challengers, for soon, you will have them. Happy practice-raiding in the meantime!

For all of you fans of G4TV out there, and we know there are quite a few, you have a special treat in store for those of you who are by a television later this evening. You will be seeing a snippet of exclusive gameplay footage.

A preview of Champions Online will be featured on G4TV's X-Play on Tuesday, January 27th. The segment will be airing at 8 pm Eastern - please check your local listings for local times.

Not only are they getting some air-time over at G4, but they're changing the way their rating system works and asking for input from the players and prospective players on how all characters should emote. This is a first for any massively multiplayer game, but let us just hope that all of the gestures are from the last three mainstream-popular dances.

Those of you lucky enough to participate in the Darkfall Online Beta reportedly had some problems. This is to be expected in beta testing, and likely the reason why the game has been delayed.  After sorting out the Denial of Service (DoS) Attack against their servers, they posted explanations and detailed plans as to what they are going to do next.

Testers experienced periodic low download speeds and various minor errors and hiccups which were soon dealt with. We increased our patching capacity and corrected small errors, until everything was running smoothly. For launch we will have in place a peer to peer system which should greatly improve download speeds and make the downloading and patching run smoothly.

Nevertheless, as most of these problems could not have been foreseen, Adventurine still manages to make everything turn up rosy. They are handling the issues in stride, and we shall be waiting for the news from the publisher on a release date and any further issues or developments.

Not wanting to vary from their completely immersing story and feature additions, EVE Online wrote today in their development blog about how they are going to add a whole new aspect to the game, with wormholes.

Wormholes will bring us to this new frontier, appearing all over New Eden as a result of a cataclysmic event, the nature of which we'll reveal in the coming months. These wormholes are unstable and will spawn and vanish randomly throughout the known universe. A pilot who stumbles across one of these stellar phenomena can fly through it and travel to unknown space, where there are no stargates or stations, just the unexplored void of a new solar system.

This is an exciting development that will tie into their story seamlessly. One has to wonder where they get so many innovative ideas but they continue to surprise everyone with the way they keep the game interesting.

It has been some time since we have heard anything new from Fallen Earth, but there have been two events from their camp recently. Initially, they have started alpha-testing the newest version of their client for this post-apocalypse-massively-multiplayer title. This is exciting news, and worth trying to sign up for it. Additionally, they have posted some information about the progress they are making on their title. This has some potential, so we will keep our eyes open and let you know if anything new develops.