Yesterday afternoon we learned that ZAM’s longtime copy editor, Judy "Looker" Freeman, passed away from lung cancer. Judy had been with ZAM since October 16, 2007. From the start, Judy worked to clean up the scribbling of our various writers, journalists, and editors. Many of us were fortunate to work with Judy, relying on her expertise to hold us up and shine the brightest light on our creative work. She never wanted to be in the spotlight, but quietly mentored a surprising number of people on the front lines of ZAM News. Chances are, if you ever read an article on ZAM, you've read something she touched.

She will be dearly missed by many here at ZAM, and many that have moved on.

Yay! Victory is ours!

The Doppelgangers have met their final defeat by the combined efforts of all three realms. Reports says that they have been killed to the last wretch and roam no more below or above the abyss. Lilith, the Demon Queen, has crawled back into the shadows from where she came, perhaps already plotting her next attempt to conquer the lands above. All seems still and at peace compared to the chaos that has been plaguing the lands for countless months. Many wonder what the next great challenge to the realms will bring.

– All quests and NPCs specifically associated with the Doppelganger Invasion have been disabled.

– The doppelganger soldiers that had been inhabiting Darkness Falls as part of this event have been turned off.

– Darkness Falls will for the time being retain the extra bonus to Realm Points and Bounty Points. Details on current bonuses may be found in this page: http://www.camelotherald.com/section.php?id=42.

Time to say goodbye to Olibar and all the midwinter fun:

The Midwinter Festival revelers have taken down their decorations and trees for the season. They will return again next year, around the same time. Though they will miss them, the citizens of Albion, Midgard, and Hibernia know that celebrations are not in short order in the realms and Valentine’s Day is right around the corner!

Friday is here and so is this weeks Grab Bag from the Camelot Herald, check out this weeks hot topics below:

Q. I've been trying to find mobs that drop the Broken Dragonsworn Armor and Weapons to no avail. The mobs in classic zones of Midgard seem to have vanished, and after farming the Dragonsworn mobs in Malmohus for an hour without a single drop I am convinced that they no longer drop.  Can you please point me in the right direction?

A. Ahhh Devon! The Lady of the Jewels explains: A few issues cropped up with Devon Cluster due to the unexpected downtime last week and the Dragonsworn and their drop rates were affected in the aftermath. After further examination this week these issues appear to be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Q. I've noticed that Mordred’s population is very low even during prime time hours. Are there any plans to revive the Mordred ruleset?

A. The Lady of the Jewels with the mischievous twinkle in her eyes once again says: We do have something in the works for Mordred currently scheduled for 1.97.

Patch 1.97a hit the Pendragon test server today, here are the patch notes of the newest tweaks:

Today's Pendragon version marks the commencement of 1.97. The testing cycle for this version will be a gradual process and over the next several weeks there will be other versions with additional content available for testing. We look forward to your feedback, suggestions, and bug reports.

 NEW THINGS AND BUG FIXES

 - The crafting bonuses that were introduced in 1.86 for the capital cities of Camelot, Jordheim, and Tir na Nog have been increased to a 20% bonus to crafting speed and a 10% chance to gain a skill point when crafting.

 - Broken Dragonsworn Armor and Broken Dragonsworn Weapons will now drop in stacks of six instead of stacks of three.

 - The loading screen tip for block and parry cap has been updated to indicate that the block cap is now 60% instead of 75%.

A wee little hot fix today:

Players will no longer experience delays while trying to access information through the /social window. Thank you for your patience while we worked to resolve this very tricky /social window issue. Happy Socializing everyone!

For your reading pleasure, here is the weekly edition of the Grab Bag from the Herald:

Q. What is the Transmutative Precipitants section of Spellcrafting used for?

A. I went to the Lady of the Jewels for this one: Currently, there isn’t a use for the frosted gem of condensation rather than to sell it for coin while leveling the tradeskill. We might use them in the future, however, if we ever need to create new recipes so we saw no reason to take them out.

Q. My friends and I were talking because Beliathan the worm spawned in DF, what's the mechanism for his spawn? None of us know, is it just a random chance or is it something like the Queen where you have to kill certain mobs in order for it to pop? Or is there some silly CSR sitting somewhere thinking to himself...WORM TIME! Please slate my curiosity and let us all know.

A. With a soft chuckle the Lady of the Jewels /yelled: Worm time! I love it! After some research it’s been discovered that Beliathan is just a very rare and random spawn. He is not affected by the death of other monsters in the area.

Hot fix for the Devon cluster:

- (Devon Only) An issue arose which was causing certain items to be displayed incorrectly. These items should be returned to normal now. Players who have one of these items may need to relog to be affected by this fix.

Those who play on the Devon cluster may have to go to plan B tonight :

Status: Devon Cluster is back online

Devon Cluster had to be taken down at 6:00 PM EST to remedy a situation regarding players being improperly removed from their guild.  At this time we have no ETA for a fix on this server but we will be providing updates throughout the evening.  Thank you for your patience while our dev team works to resolve these issues.

Update 10:55 PM EST - Devon Cluster is back online. Thank you for your understanding and patience.

Update: 9:05 PM EST - Our development team has run into further issues.  Our current ETA is now Midnight EST.

Update: 7:20 PM EST -  Our current ETA for Devon Cluster is 9:00 PM EST. We will have to perform a rollback to this morning's backup in order to resolve the issue with players being removed from their guilds.  Unfortunately this means players will lose items and experience gained since this morning.

Please Note: Our folks in CS would like to inform you that unfortunately they are unable to restore/replace any items, money, or transactions lost due to the rollback. We apologize for any inconvenience.

From the Camelot Herald :

We apologize for not posting sooner, but there will be no Grab Bag today. You may have heard elsewhere that Joanne took the day off; she is grieving the loss of a very close family member and could not be reached to provide this week's Grab Bag content. Our thoughts and sincere well-wishes are with Joanne and her family in this difficult time. We will return you to your regularly scheduled Grab Bag next Friday. Thank you for your understanding.