Plarium support admitted to me yesterday that Facebook members got advance notice on the event. Too bad the rest of us got HOSED. If you noticed, Plarium also gave out a level of "long lived" achievement over the holidays, for Facebook members only.
Looks like they are trying to COERCE players to join Facebook.
Still getting a pile of excuses from support. And I notice that none of their forum moderators are bothering to comment on this situation. Looks like they want to sweep this under the rug, and hope nobody notices.
Hopefully, more people will comment here, and mail support. Otherwise, expect Plarium to "play favorites" by only notifying select players about upcoming events.