Rock, Europe's leading gaming laptop pimp, announced a partnership with CCP in which the developer of EVE Online will provide Rock notebook customers with an exclusive 30-day free trial of the MMO. Read the press release below.

Rock, Europe�s leading gaming laptop manufacturer, today announced a partnership with CCP, the developers of EVE Online, to provide its Notebook customers with an exclusive, 30-day free trial of leading MMO EVE Online. The EVE Online trial will come pre-installed on all Rock Notebooks sold in the February and March 2009, presenting serious gamers with the opportunity to immerse themselves in an advanced, constantly evolving game.

Set in space, tens of thousands of years in the future, the persistent universe of EVE Online features explosive warfare, a fully-fledged economy and a complex society with a class system and its own representative democracy. With more than a quarter of a million subscribers, EVE Online is a sophisticated game that requires advanced strategic gameplay to succeed. Its single-sharded world enables players to build their reputations and achieve a real legacy built on in-world fame.

�We design and manufacture some of the fastest, high-performance gaming notebooks in the world, inevitably our customer base is primarily composed of serious gamers,� says Nick Boardman of Rock. �EVE Online is just the kind of advanced, graphics-intensive game that appeals to our audience. Our partnership with CCP enables us to deliver greater value to our gaming customers.�

�With overlapping audiences, our partnership with rock is highly synergistic in that rock Notebooks run EVE Online with our graphics turned all the way up, enabling rock customers to experience the gameplay and art of EVE as it was meant to be,� says Magn�s Bergsson, VP of sales, CCP. �Through this partnership, both CCP and rock will be able to further expand their audiences. We�re thrilled to work together.�

Please visit www.rockdirect.com for more information.

In the latest installment of Open Discussion, Angelina Rayne brings up the hot topic of the week: bots and copyright infringement. Are bots taking the fun out of gaming? Should companies such as MDY (Glider bot for WoW) be held responsible? Discuss it here!

In what can only be the work of an NPC labor union, the forces at CCP have been hard at work upping the difficulty of NPCs in the PvE environment in EVE Online.

That way, players will be able to experience a much greater sense of accomplishment - at least that is what's hoped.

You can read all about the conundrum in the latest CCP Dev Blog.

EVE Online: Quantum Rise 1.0.5 was deployed on Tranquility yesterday in order to implement the redeeming system for PLEX and to address some minor fixes. CCP will continue to monitor Tranquility until they are fully satisfied that the issues have been solved. Patch notes are available for review here.

CCP Whisper takes to the blogwaves to talk about the upcoming expansion for EVE Online, Apocrypha. The first thing that caught my eye was the introduction of a new travel mode, Wormholes! You have to admit that's pretty hot, like who hasn't wanted to travel through a wormhole at some point? I know! You'd be crazy not to want to.

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. And when I say "new solar system" that is exactly what I mean. It will not be moving you to instanced space but rather to one of the thousands of new solar systems we will be adding to the EVE universe.

The wormholes themselves will be open only for a randomly determined amount of time and can only let through a certain amount of mass before they collapse. Pilots should carefully consider the information their ship's computer gives them about a wormhole before committing to travel through it. Although there will always be a way back to known space from wormhole space, you may have to search long and hard to locate it. And in that process, you may find wormholes that lead you to even more unexplored wormhole systems, launching you on a voyage of exploration the likes of which EVE has never seen before.

Find out more!

I love drama! Thanks Massively for pointing out that some dude in EVE Online made off with 86 billion ISK! Xabier, Dynasty Investments Manager for the player-run Dynasty Banking, had access to the funds invested by EVE players. Massively contacted the player whom stated they had taken 86 billion ISK, which is now worth 106.2 billion ISK due to investments made with the stolen booty. Apparently the theft resulted in a couple of folks getting canned from the virtual bank, and changes will be made to how much ISK a player can access. From the bank:

"This ISK lost due to Xabier only effects Dynasty Banking's equity balance, so we still have more than enough assets to cover all deposits and will resume business per usual." His statement seems to indicate that the situation is under control, but there are other options to keep the bank afloat should investors panic and thus cause a further run on the bank. EBANK, now the largest player-run bank in New Eden, has stated it's willing to assist in the event that this run on Dynasty Banking becomes serious.

CCP is hard at work making sure that the next EVE Online expansion is rolled out on time.

They've put up a new blog over at their main site about just how busy they've been.

After reading it, I want to work for CCP, because apparently they have grilled lamb all the time. DELICIOUS!

Look for a lot of updates from their different Dev Teams in the upcoming weeks.

The MMOFury Award recipients have been announced, and IGN Vault has received the award for Top Multi-Game Fansite Database. Give yourselves some props!

IGN-Vault has done it once again by holding onto their Top Database Award via launching a number of huge databases for AOC and WAR. This Fansite's contributors are highly professional and the website runs like a well oiled machine. With so many great mmorpg databases out there, it takes alot to be recognized as the leader and IGN-Vault meets those requirements with more to spare. With a dedication to the community, IGN-Vault keeps on getting better.

EVE Online kicks off 2009 with two installments in the new chronicle series "End of the World"! The new installments are now available on the chronicle site, and EVE fans can expect more to come up until the release of the Apocrypha expansion. Start by reading "The Spiral", then move on to the darkness of "Half a Life".

Voting ends on January 31st for the third annual Beckett Massive Online Gamer MOG Reader's Choice Awards. Get your votes in now while you still can, voting is quick, easy and includes all of the usual suspects plus some titles you probably didn't expect!

There are seven categories to vote in:

Best New MMO Release of 2008
Best MMO of 2008
Best Fantasy MMO of 2008
Best Sci-Fi/Historical MMO of 2008
Best Expansion/Addition of 2008
Best MMO Trailer Released in 2008
Most Anticipated MMO

CCP Zulupark writes up a new EVE Online Developer Blog to discuss how they plan on dealing with graphics requirements for their upcoming expansion(s). EVE prides itself on being able to run on pretty much any computer built after 1998. BUT... at this point it also requires them to downtune their engine quite a bit to maintain the "Classic" client. To allow players to take advantage of newer technology, it's out with "Classic" and in with "Premium Lite".

Premium Lite will only require ShaderModel 2.0 hardware, and far less texture memory than the current Premium, ensuring good framerates on older hardware. We won't stop there - we are providing two flavors of ShaderModel 2.0 compatible shaders, currently named "lo" and "hi". What does this mean? It means that framerate enthusiasts can get even more performance when running under ShaderModel 2.0. We will also allow people to select any ShaderModel below what their hardware supports - thus allowing players to trade quality for performance and vice versa.

So the plan is to discontinue ShaderModel 1 and the Classic Client for Apocrypha come March 10th, and replace it with Premium Lite. In the Winter 2009 Expansion they may also discontinue support for ShaderModel 2. How many people will this affect? You can weigh in.

Voodoo Extreme tosses us a new poll to chew on, this time asking the question which MMOs do you still play?. Go vote to show your support for EVE Online!

While up until now players with machines from the late '90s could theoretically run EVE Online, the folks at CCP have finally decided it's time to update things.

In a new blog they have described what they plan to implement in the newest expansion coming up.

By cutting support for the less powerful machines, they aim to streamline the way enhancements are made in the future.

Is this going to alienate you from playing the game? Let us know how you feel about this.

The 6th EVE Online Tournament is on its way and CCP has just announced the team lineups.

Take a look at all 64 teams that have entered and be prepared for a furious battle.

You can view the full list -- NextWeek @ 11:40 PST

Taking the latest Vault Network scoops and jamming them into one page for an at-a-glance look at the past week. Check out Vault Week in Review for a recap of the latest news headlines, Vault features, game of the week, wiki of the week, Vault of the week and more!

MTV Multiplayer asked several MMO developers from Funcom, Mythic, Turbine and more, about their plans to keep the MMO wheels spinning for players in 2009. Craig Morrison talks about Age of Conan, Matt Miller for NCsoft, Jeffrey Steefel and Michael Jablonn for Lord of the Rings Online, Noah �Hammerhead� Ward for EVE Online, and finally the Mythic crew of Josh Drescher, Paul Barnett, Jeff Hickman and Mark Jacobs for Warhammer Online. Read on!