My American sources tell me this is a long weekend for you folks across the pond. Something about independence from Blighty a few hundred years ago. Essentially an excuse to let off fireworks, have BBQs, enjoy the fine weather and skive off work. Good on you. It seems like lots of MMOs are using it as an excuse to take the real celebrations in-game. For example, World of Warcraft has the Midsummer Fire Festival which concludes tomorrow with a bunch of snoozing goblin guards and a whopping fireworks display. Likewise, Lord of the Rings Online has one festival with four different names.

Given the fact the games are created by humans, it's no surprise the in-game festivals of all our favourite MMOs share a little in common with actual celebrations in real life. However they can also be handy for people too far away to meet up this 4th of July, most often troops on active duty or family members and friends separated by thousands of miles or even continents. So are any of you out there planning to eschew real celebrations in favour of meeting up with your guildies in-game? Are you going to travel around to see the fireworks or, if you play, WoW raid an enemy city. Do you prefer celebrating such events in-game? Do you mark them on your calendar and anticipate them as much as their real world counterparts? Do you wish the developers would expand world festivals to take account of more important holidays?

Lord of the Rings Online is coming to China later in the year, thanks to CDC Games and their partnership with Turbine. CDC Games is one of the largest online gaming distributors in China, and is said to be a pioneer in the 'free-to-play, pay for merchandise' business model in that country.

Despite what are said to be significant changes in the game from the version now played in North America, Europe, Russia and South Korea, the Chinese closed beta has been going very well for CDC with an 80 percent activation rate. These 'significant changes' include an enhanced PvP function, which CDC believes will cater more towards the Chinese playerbase that they already know so well.

Considering CDC Games' work with F2P games, we're curious about other 'significant changes' including a new business model for China, although there has been no official word on this.

Now that the Summer Festival has begun in Lord of the Rings Online, a new developer diary has been posted that tells us a bit about some of the events, and what's different from previous festivals. This year, party invitations have been sent to each player's mailbox. This is more than a formality -- handing in the invitation will net you a Summer Festival Guide and Fishing Guide, to help with your enjoyment of the festivities and to make sure that you don't miss out on anything that's going on. There should also be an extra little present along with the two guides.

The developer diary goes on to talk about two big events that are taking place during the Festival, The Keg Races at Thorin's Hall and The Taste of Hobbiton. Each of these events has four contestants, and you can learn a lot more about them at the diary. Lastly, it unfortunately looks like the Festival Run Horse Races won't be held this year. However, it's not all bad news: "The festival run token is still being offered as a reward to those who can generate a sizeable quantity of barter tokens. This means the Lithe horse and pony will still be available to those who look forward to owning this eye-catching mount."

GamesIndustry.biz recently reached out to Codemasters, publisher of the European version of Lord of the Rings Online and the upcoming Jumpgate Evolution, for their comment on a rumor that Warner Bros. may be getting ready to buy them out. The rumor was first seen at VG247 (warning: link contains colorful but entertaining language) and it claims that Warner has "completed due diligence and buyout discussions are ongoing". This prompted GI.biz to seek clarification from Codemasters.

Their reply? "We won't respond to that story. Everything is fine here." Ok, so sometimes 'no comment' does just mean 'no comment', but it certainly doesn't close the book on the whole rumor situation with any conviction. Warner Bros. didn't return GI.biz's calls (yet) so there's no confirmation to be had from them either. It looks like we might just have to wait and see if anything actually eventuates -- or for more insider leaks perhaps.

The time has finally come for players of the US/Oceanic version of Lord of the Rings Online to experience Volume 2 Book 8: Scourge of Khazad-Dûm, as the large patch makes it to the live servers today. The information-packed official update notes are long and dense; here is a small sample of the changes and additions:

• The Epic Book 8 quest line, involving the thwarting of Gorothúl, sorcerer of Dol Guldur
• The Summer Festival, including two new events, located at The Shire and the area outside Thorin's Hall
• A huge crafting revamp
• Numerous class tweaks
• A barter system for First Age Legendary Items
• Changes to Lothlorien Gift Boxes
• A boat NPC for Lake Everswim... er, Evendim!

Of course, to get the full scoop on these changes and more you'll want to sift through the actual notes, or for a more visual take, you can check the dev tour we were given late last month that looks at some of these things.

The other good news is that we now know that Thursday the 25th is the tentative release date for Book 8 on the European servers. It was first spotted on the LotRO-Europe Twitter, and later backed up by Community Officer Faya on the forums. We're expecting official confirmation of the European launch date within the next 24 hours.

The longer you are exposed to the One Ring, the stronger the hold it begins to have over you. It would appear Turbine has been able to harness this magic and set it loose upon the unsuspecting gaming population because The Lord of the Rings Online is continuing to grow even two years after its release.

When VG247 caught up with Live Producer Aaron Campbell and asked him about any potential server merges, he had this to say: "If anything, The Lord of the Rings Online is growing. We have no plans to merge servers." Since Turbine nefariously refuses to release subscription numbers for any of their MMOs, I guess we'll have to take his word for it.

Is it really that difficult to believe though when you consider the steady stream of content Turbine releases in the form of new Books? They also launched a strong second anniversary campaign, which included a digital download of the original game plus the Mines of Moria expansion for only $9.99. This pricing is still available.

Massively has been following the latest content update for Lord of the Rings Online, which is Volume II Book 8: Scourge of Khazad-Dûm. We've now learned via MMeOw that Scourge of Khazad-Dûm will release on June 23 (US/Oceanic)! As a bonus, players can already download the patch; the update weighs in at a fairly hefty 600mb and links can be found in the official announcement on the LotRO forums. The patch notes are epic in length, and it might just be quicker to re-read one of Tolkien's works, but they seem to cover everything that's changing in Lord of the Rings Online.

If the 23rd and the release of Scourge of Khazad-Dûm can't come soon enough for you, have a look through the dev tour that Turbine gave us, showing a bit of the content you'll soon be playing in Volume II Book 8.

One Shots needs your screenshots - no matter what game you're playing. Gather some up and email them to us at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name and the game its from. We'll post your screens and give you credit for capturing the moment.

Lore is the keystone of every good MMO, it crafts the raid instances and pushes the game to new heights in the form of expansions and patches. For many it is the lure of the lore -- and by extension the playable races -- which pulls them into the game. When I was a little younger than I am now, I studied classics and religious studies and theology at a uni in London for almost four years. I dig religion, I adore translations of ancient texts and I really, really like mythology. As a result fantasy games are especially fascinating for me to me. When everyone else sees Titans, I see a mishmash of the actual Titans and the Olympians given new life, where you see Anubisath I see the ancient Egyptian protector of the dead. Where you see Val'kyr, I see Odin's barmaidens.

So come on readers, how important is lore to you? Do you dig finding all the references in game? Does the lore make a game more rich and appealing? Does it make it feel more real? Do you not give a fig? Are you more interested in just killing things? Do you play titles like AoC or LotRO just because of the books they were inspired by?

In a recent dev journal from Turbine's Jared "Amlug" Hall-Dugas, we get an inside look at some of the new changes to raiding and instances coming with Lord of the Rings Online's Book 8. As we first announced late last month through our Book 8 dev tour, these new instances are quite the focus in this newest content patch.

This dev journal goes into a bit more depth from the technical side of what we can expect from the new instances, changes to existing instances and the changes to item drops in instances and raids. Amlug also explains the drop rate changes for First Age weapons per Watcher run, and the increased availability of Radiance gear for those runs. You can check out the complete journal over at Amlug's mylotro.com page, and keep an eye on Massively as we get closer to Book 8's release, later this month.

One of the features of the next Lord of the Rings Online update, Volume 2: Book 8, is a revamping of some of the game's low to mid-level quests. The latest developer diary on the official site elaborates on the methods through which this will be achieved. A great deal of the overhauling will focus on the Bree-land zone, including Bree-town. Come Book 2.8, the area will be changed to be of more use to players between the levels 14-22, and we're promised two distinct questing paths that will lead to different places in the zone, and hopefully highlight some of the bigger storylines of Bree-land.

As Bree-land will become more commonly used by Tier 2 players, the crafting nodes in the area will also be changed to their Tier 2 versions. New repeatable "bounty quests" will be available, and existing quest rewards have been completely revised to ensure their usefulness for players in the adjusted level range. To learn more about all of the above changes, make sure to read the full dev diary.

While technically Thursday isn't a weekend day for most of us, it's still a good time to start planning those epic adventures as our regular Lord of the Rings Online contributor, Vengar is doing. He writes in: I was thinking about the weekend upcoming and how many of us will be running into our favorite game worlds this weekend when I snapped this pic of my lvl50 Champion Vengar, 'The Just' from the Nimrodel server running into Middle-earth as he finds a beautiful sun setting over Bree after a long day of questing. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

Something old, something new, something freaky, something... well, anything really. We're all about MMO screenshots from all the different worlds out there. Just send them in to oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name/server/guild and a brief description. Your screenshot(s) could be among the next ones featured here on Massively!

Turbine continues to shower us with imagery of their next free content update Volume II, Book 8: Scourge of Khazad-dûm. This go-around we've been treated to a look at the Hall of Mirrors, a place where giant expensive looking mirrors shine light into the otherwise dark, vast caves.

Look, we're not sure it's so wise to have all these mirrors where things like giant wolves and bat monsters live, especially when adventurers seem to think it's fun to stomp through the place and fight everything in sight. Sooner or later, you know one of those giant mirrors is going to break. And what's the cost do you think? Probably several platinum pieces that frankly, we don't have.