The monthly mini event Moonlight Enchantments (often called "The Grottos") starts tonight!  The event will turn on at 12:01am PST on March 20th and run until 11:59pm PST on March 21st. These times apply directly with no time conversion to all servers.

If you need to hand finding these mysterious mushroom rings or want a peek at the rewards, see our Moonlight Enchantments Mini Live Event page!

GENERAL

• Brawler Focus: Stances red adornments have been restored to their original values.

BATTLEGROUNDS

• Fixed an issue that would cause some players to become stuck when returning home from a battlegrounds match.
• It should no longer be possible to cause your character to become stuck by spam-clicking the cloud mounts in Smuggler’s Den.

Y'all are cordially invited to the next exciting EQII ZAM Developers Chat!  This is the chat that was postponed a couple weeks ago.  We've saved all the questions sent in advance, so there's no need to send them again!

• Thursday, March 18, 5:00pm PDT
• In the #EQ2 channel on ZAM IRC
• General chat during the actual event will be in #EQ2FFA

New to Allakhazam IRC?  Instructions here!  Or use EQ2Wire's EQII ZAM Chat portal.

Here is a handy Time Zone Converter, already set to Pacific time, to help you plan!

Brewday, the Norrathian holiday celebrating all things beer, I mean, Brell, hits live servers March 11 and will run through March 22.  ZAM's own Cyliena has been on Test drinking her way from tavern to tavern and brings us news of a new collection quest and new crafting recipes!

It's pretty easy to find the Bar of Brell, there's portals outside major Norrathian cities.  But if you need a hint or maybe got started on the ale early, see our Brewday page!

Alan "Brenlo" Crosby, EQII Senior Producer, posted on the official forums addressing the recent Battlegrounds transmuting bug and actions taken against players who exploited it.

This weekend an exploit was found on the Battlegrounds server which allowed players to transmute items, and have those items returned when leaving the Battlegrounds.  This occured due to a change we made in the code to speed up the return process.  While we understand that this was a bug of our creation, some players chose to take advantage of it, knowing it was not meant to work in that fashion. 

Many players took advantage of the bug, to varying degrees.  Some of our community however went to great lengths to abuse the bug.  For those accounts that abused this obvious bug, we have taken action.  Some have been removed from the game altogether, while others are losing all of the items on their characters.  All will face at least some time removed from the game as we sort through the various logs and track down their ill-gained platinum and items. 

While we hate to remove anyone from our community, our family, there are times that for the good of the servers, the in-game economy and the community we do find ourselves forced to take action.  Unfortunately, this was one such occasion.

This week's hotfox brings us a few changes to Battlegrounds, as well as raid mob changes and minor quest and item tweaks. 

GENERAL

• It should be more difficult to get out of PvP combat after engaging someone in PvP combat.
• You can no longer break PvP encounters by using /yell.
• All raid mobs have had their damage and melee reduced by 10-20%

SOE has announced the dates and location for SOE Fan Faire 2010!  This annual event allows players and developers from all SOE games to mingle and discuss all matters MMO.

Fan Faire will be August 5 - 8, 2010 at Bally's Las Vegas.  See the official Fan Faire website for details!

Source:  EQII Official Forums

There will be a hotfix on Thursday to take care of a "rather urgent issue."  The US servers will patch at the usual time of 6am PST and Runnyeye and Splitpaw will patch at 9pm PST (5am GMT Friday March 5).  Downtime is expected to last an hour to an hour and a half.

After this EQII should be returning to the normal Tuesday morning hotfixes.  Here's our handy Time Zone Convertor to help you plan.

Source:  Official Forums

Today's update includes a fix to an AA Mirror bug, many quest tweaks, and a mechanic to help with people going AFK in Battlegrounds.

ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT

• Fixed a bug which caused achievement mirrors to not work correctly in some instances on a PvP server.

BATTLEGROUNDS

• You can no longer join a battlegrounds match while possessing a creature.
• Fixed a bug which allowed group leaders to kick people from group in battlegrounds.
• We’ve implemented an AFK voting system into battlegrounds in order to report teammates that have gone AFK in a match. A player can only be voted AFK if they haven’t had any recent activity. If they receive 3 unique votes for AFK’ing during a match they will be removed from the match and will not receive a reward. Players removed this way will also receive the truancy debuff.

Industrious Norrathians have discovered the Far Seas Caravans outside the city of Neriak!  This monthly festival is a place to spend those City Tokens you've been earning doing City Tasks on city-themed house items and other fun stuff.  Don't forget to pick up a spiffy Festival outfit! 

For more information on the City festivals, including the exact location, see our City Festivals page!