Codemasters Connect is less than three weeks away now. As promised, the announcements are coming thick and fast!

As a matter a fact a tantalizing LOTRO announcement was just posted to the Connect website.

The announcement can be found here, but here's a short excerpt:

David Solari, Vice President and General Manager of Codemasters Online commented "Connect is shaping up to be a great event with some massive announcements. We're extremely pleased Turbine has agreed to make the trip out to Europe to share the worldwide exclusive announcement we've lined up for The Lord of the Rings Online. I guarantee this is going to get the community buzzing".

Why is everyone starting to talk at once and why is everyone starting to chant Moria?

New details about Book 13: New instances, Regions, Horses, Ettenmoors, and much more...
Click here to see what we have discovered so far

If you and your guild are meeting up at Connect, why not book our special Guild meeting room? We've set aside a rather nice meeting room just for guilds so that they can conduct meetings and catch up with all their members. If you'd like to book this room, when you arrive to the event, please speak to a member of staff who will be happy to assist you with your booking. Please note that booking of the guild facilities is completely free of charge to all Connect attendees. Tickets are limited and if you haven’t purchased yours we urge you to buy your tickets as soon as possible. www.codemastersconnect.com

Enjoy and read latest STRATIC dev chat transcript 

- If there will be any new 12/24 man raid coming, with book 13?
- Will we see any new 6-Man-Instances in Book 13?
- Will we once be able to buy decorations for our mounts ?
- Will we have more Emotes?
- Will the Auction Hall search problem be fixed any time soon?

If you have recently noticed that a lot of players have their names colored in white,  don't be confused,  they are flagged for roleplaying.
How do you flag yourself for roleplaying? Simply:  /rp on and /rp off.

This feature was always available but before Book 12 the /rp on command just worked for one single playing session. Right now it will stay on until you turn it off manually.

Not one to miss out on a gaming industry trend as hot as corporate synergy, Electronic Arts recently proposed an acquisition of Take-Two Interactive Software for $26 a share (nearly a 63 percent premium to their current stock value) -- for a grand total of approximately $2 billion.

Before you start feverishly fantasizing about a Bioshock/Crysis mash-up, you should know that Take-Two's executive chairman, Strauss Zelnick, shot down the proposal upon receiving it last Tuesday. Attempting to go over the bossman's head, EA CEO John Riccitiello made his proposal public, hoping that Take-Two shareholders will find the offer more attractive than Zelnick initially did.

EA intends to keep the proposal on the table to give Take-Two's board of directors "further time to consider it," obviously hoping to force Zelnick's hand. Whether or not this strategy will work, we imagine we'll find out in the next few days. We'll keep you updated as the situation develops.

Take-Two's Board of Directors have considered the offer, and politely refused. Check out the full story for Zelnick's reasoning behind shooting down the proposal.

Source joystiq.com

Makers of the blockbusting Lord Of The Rings movie trilogy are being sued for hundreds of millions of dollars by the estate of author JRR Tolkien.

Lawyers for the estate claim Hollywood-based New Line Cinema has failed to pay "even one penny" from the profits of the films, which have grossed some £3bn ($6bn) worldwide since 2001.They want £77m ($150m) in compensation, as well as "punitive" damages. They are also calling for New Line to be stripped of the right to make any more films based on Tolkien's work.

This would include The Hobbit - plans for two movies were announced last December.

Tolkien's estate and publishers HarperCollins have been named as co-plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by the Tolkien Trust, a UK charity, in Los Angeles Superior Court.

One of their legal team, Bonnie Eskenazi, said: "I cannot imagine how on earth New Line will argue to a jury that these films could gross literally billions of dollars and yet the creator's heirs, who are entitled to a share of gross receipts, don't get a penny."

A spokesman for New Line declined to comment.

The Tolkien trustees' Britain-based lawyer Steven Maier insisted the action was the last resort. He said: "The Tolkien trustees do not file lawsuits lightly, and have tried unsuccessfully to resolve their claims out of court. But in this case, New Line has left them no option at all."

The lawsuit also claims that as well as failing to pay the plaintiffs a cut of the profits from the films, New Line had blocked an audit of the last two in the series, 2002's The Two Towers and 2003's Oscar-winning The Return Of The King.

Source: Sky News

Troll and Ranger session play is now available!
Please remember that running more than two Ranger or Troll sessions within 12 hours is considered an exploit and may be subject to disciplinary measures. Enjoy!

UK bank Halifax and its subsidiary Bank of Scotland are blocking credit card transactions that pay for World of Warcraft subscriptions, after the massively popular MMO was linked to an unseasonably high number of credit card fraud incidents.

Halifax is the only bank to take this action thus far, and doesn't blame Blizzard, but notes that a large number of stolen cards are being used to fund WoW subscriptions and that the bank is therefore being cautious.

The Bank of Scotland, part of the Halifax group, are also blocking payments at present.

HBoS customers now need to contact their branch in order to authorize future transactions involving Blizzard.

"We have seen a significant number of fraudulent transactions through Blizzard's gaming sites. We have, therefore, blocked the majority of Visa/Mastercard transactions we receive from there in order to combat this," the bank explained.

"We do not believe the fraud is anything to do with Blizzard themselves, their sites or the integrity of their billing systems, rather it is site users utilising stolen credit card details to pay for subscriptions. If a customer does want to subscribe to a game site operated by Blizzard, using a Halifax or Bank of Scotland credit card, we can arrange for the payments to be processed for them if they contact us."

Lord of the Rings Online's Book 12 update is out, and Book 13 should be ready by sometime this spring. A significant slice of information will be revealed at Codemasters' upcoming Online Connect 2008 event in Birmingham, England this March.

Book 13 will include a new explorable landmass and a fishing system. Turbine also hinted at further tweaks to their barber shop interface, a refined looking for group system, and some kind of online leaderboards to reinforce the game's sense of community.

In other news, Turbine recently released information that they'd extended their licensing agreement for MMOGs based on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit to at least 2014. So now, though Turbine isn't saying anything, it appears we're just waiting on that The Hobbit Online announcement…

Source: GDC 2008: The Lord of the Rings Online Update

Click here to read new information about Book 13.