Holidays have passed, and now it’s time to get busy again with a big round of bugfixes and enhancements.

MobArena has been receiving the most attention in this update:

• Skeletons have found their bows, and are now firing arrows as they were always supposed to. In addition, there’s a chance their bows are enchanted and fire more powerful blows (knockback and fire arrows are two of the possible enchantments).
• After much searching in the Nether, zombie pigmen stumbled upon a long forgotten stash of golden swords and decided to take them to battle. Since they found their weapons they’re more ballsy and immediately attack any players that are nearby.
• Tired of waiting for that person that’s always AFK? “Hit the damn iron block” sounds familiar? Well, we’ve listened and now each arena battle starts automatically – if there’s at least 1 person ready – 60 seconds after the first person joins that arena.
• Want to fight in the arena, but don’t fell like spectating to see when the battle’s over? Each arena announces when it is open, and you can join. Watch for messages like this one in chat:

If you’ve been used to farming the outer walls of the Pyramid Mob Arena, or teleported players there to take advantage of the PVP free zone to kill them, this has changed. That area is now protected and PVP is disabled in the entire Pyramid zone.

Several plugins have been optimized for speed, or otherwise modified to get them ready for the upcoming fireworks and enchanted books update. Soon(tm).