Hang in there! There were apparently some unexpected issues while implementing all of the new features and updates, and the servers will be offline for a while longer. You can get updates in the following locations:

• EQ2 Forums: Downtime Extended (forums are flaking out at times during the maintenance; be patient!)
• ZAM’s GU62 downtime updates page
• EverQuest II’s Facebook page
• EverQuest II’s Twitter stream

In the meantime, check out the latest Producer’s Letter for some tasty tidbits while you wait!

 Update: Smokejumper posted on Twitter that the game should be online at 10:00am Pacific, and SOE’s CTO posted this on the EQ2Wire site.

Update #2: The servers are up as of about 10:15am Pacific! Have fun!! :D

[Check out the official GU blurb from the forums!]

Age of Discovery is the eighth expansion of the groundbreaking EverQuest II franchise.  Age of Discovery offers never-seen-before features including user-generated content and the re-imagining of the Beastlord class from the original EverQuest release.  You can make your mark in-game by creating your very own Dungeon, hire some much needed help for your heroic battles, push tradeskilling research to new heights, customize your weapons at the forge, and of course, play as a Beastlord. There’s a lot to like about this expansion!

EverQuest II’s eighth expansion — Age of Discovery — is arriving tomorrow, and there are other big changes coming to the game that aren’t part of the expansion.

Probably the biggest non-expansion news is that EQ2 is going free-to-play, and the EQ2X  and subscription EQ2 services are merging. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the way you play the game will change: You can keep paying a monthly fee to continue accessing the game and its features as you always have, or you can go with a free account and keep playing the game whenever you like (albeit at reduced capabilities, such as item, class, and race limitations). You can find more answers about the F2P changes here.

Another big announcement is the arrival of the biggest yearly festival in all of Norrath: Frostfell! As of this posting, it will run from December 6 through January 6 (subject to change, of course), and this year’s celebration brings new quests, new rewards, and new craftable items. EQ2 Traders has its usual superb write-ups here, and ZAM has updated their Frostfell hub as well.

And now to the expansion! The biggest bullet points are:

• Beastlords
• Mercenaries
• Tradeskill Apprentices
• Freeport Revamp
• Dungeon Maker
• Reforging
• EQ2 Share — post to Twitter & Facebook from in-game!

I’ll post the full patch notes here as soon as they’re available, but in the meantime, check out ZAM’s AoD info hub as well as EQ2 Traders’ preliminary AoD write-up.

This post from Cyliena over at ZAM sums everything up nicely:

All servers will come down at 12:01am PST on Tuesday, December 6, 2011 for the Age of Discovery and Game Update 62 patch. Estimated downtime is currently 12 hours; U.S. servers are anticipated to come back online around 12:00pm PST (noon). Due to the volume of data involved, international servers will experience extended downtime. When patch notes are available we will put them on our Game Update 62 page.

In addition, SOE account management and commerce services will be offline for all games during the transition period. Forums may also experience periodic outages. Remember that the EQ2X forums will be locked tomorrow morning at 10:00am PST. All EQ2X forum users should take this time to register anew on the EQII forums; you can start posting there now!

Beginning at 8:00am PST there will be a live webcast, Countdown to the Age of Discovery, on TwitchTV. Various members of the EQII team will be interviewed on the webcast. It is expected to run until 9:45am PST.

A producer’s letter from Dave “Smokejumper” Georgeson is also expected tomorrow morning. We’ll keep you updated once that is available. In addition, the EverQuest2.com website is being relaunched into its new incarnation and should be available after the downtime. Pre-orders for Age of Discovery will remain open until 11:59pm PST tonight, December 5.

During the downtime you are welcome to join us in the #EQ2 channel of ZAM’s IRC chat. Feldon of EQ2Wire also has set up a ZAM IRC java applet that you can use.

A GENERAL SUMMARY OF WHAT’S IN GAME UPDATE 61:

• All dungeon and overland loot items have been re-itemized. What does this mean? It means loot everywhere should be legitimate for the level it drops for, no matter where you go now. Go explore some nooks and crannies you haven’t seen for a long time and get off the Golden Path! The loot’s good again.
• The Velious saga continues as you journey past the Citadel of Drunder to the Plane of War itself in a new dungeon and raid, and a continuation of the Signature quest line.
• New dynamically-scaling dungeons have been added. These scale to your group between levels 60-90 and are designed as new single group heroic content that’s more re-playable. We’ll be watching your reactions to these initial two dungeon experiments and improving on these in the future!
• The new House Rating System lets you publish your house so other players can rate it, as well as adding house leaderboards, easy access to housing, and more! (And we increased House Ownership limits to 20, instead of 10!)
• If you ever wanted to show EQII to your friends, it’s now very easy. Push a button, record, and post your footage to YouTube with our new Video Capture system.
• The Eastern Wastes area in Velious now has a lot more overland content added to it (the new quests start at the Ry’Gorr keep).
• A big revamp of the class AA tree so that it’s easier to select the AAs you want, and adding more utility to the AAs that were weak previously.
• Many stats have been un-capped so that they have meaning as your characters progress. This doesn’t result in massive power increases, but it does let all stats continue to have meaning as you earn new items and power. Additional mechanics changes were made to increase power for many classes. (See below for things like spell auto-attack, flurry improvements, etc.)
• Tradeskillers now have their own AA tree to chase!
• And yes, Fae and Arasai now have a level 85 quest that can unlock their ability to FLY!

A FEW IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT!

• The reitemization means that the following things are going to occur:
  • All of your items are going to become UNATTUNED.
  • Any item that you are wearing at the time of this update *that has adornments on it* will have those adornments popped off and returned to your inventory. (You can put them right back on afterward, if you so desire.)
• Because of the AA revamp, *all AA points are reset*. Thus, you should plan a bit of time to reassign your AA points after this update.
• We are excited to bring you the Plane of War raid, but since the raid progression has not yet been completed by players to allow access to that raid, we’re going to take advantage of that situation to keep the door locked for a week to give it a bit more polish.
• The Dungeon Finder feature scheduled for GU 61 is slightly delayed. It will become available ASAP after it sits on Test for a week or so.

There’s lots more. See the details below for more info!

The Fortress of Drunder has emptied of Rallos Zek and his armies as they pass into the Plane of War to prepare for their eventual march on the Western Wastes. The Demi-Gods, Tallon and Vallon Zek, are subjugated within its towers, ignorant of Rallos’ grand scheme. Only Sullon Zek, the Maiden of Rage, is aware of what is to transpire. Trapped within her own tower, she has taken great risks to seek out worthy and daring heroes and guide them into the walls of Drunder.

Now it is up to you to grapple the Minions of Zek and battle your way through events that will gain you amazing allies and set into motion a war that will end all wars!

Delve into Drunder’s:

• Three new Heroic Dungeons – Spire of Rage – Strategist’s Stronghold – Tower of Tactics
• Three new x4 Raids – Sullon’s Spire – Tallon’s Stronghold – Vallon’s Tower [Normal and Challenge]
• One new x2 Raid – Citadel of V’uul

Today’s the big day, and there’s a ton of information out there already about the features of EQ2′s latest expansion! Bide your time until the servers come up by checking out all the goodies:

• ZAM DoV Guides (ZAM)
• DoV Tradeskill Preview (EQ2 Traders)
• Launch Day Schedule (EQ2 Players)

Without further ado, here are the patch notes!

Following the events of Sentinel’s Fate, the twin Swords of Destiny, Soulfire and the Qeynos Claymore, have been drained of their powers, setting the stage for the destruction of the EverQuest universe. The prophecy known as Age’s End begins to unfold in the legendary continent of Velious, and it is here where the war for Norrath will arise. For there to be any chance to save Norrath, the Swords of Destiny must be restored.

Norrathian guardians who undertake this burden will be tested by labyrinthine dungeons, the harsh Velious tundra, and powerful creatures including the God of War himself, Rallos Zek. To succeed will mean ultimate glory. To fail could mean annihilation.

Destiny of Velious Features:

• Soar high above Norrath with flying mounts
• Crawl your way through 10 dangerous dungeons
• Complete four new Heritage Quests
• Battle through more than 300 new quests
• Craft through more than 60 new tradeskill quesfts
• Conquer one new truly massive contested dungeon
• Discover two new overland zones
• Defeat four new raid instances
• Collect more than 1,000 new weapons and items
• Journey through a new Signature Quest line
• Slay more than 30 new creatures
• Equip more than 100 new armor sets
• New AA abilities with an increased cap of 300

Click through to read the patch notes in full…

Erollisi Day 2011 went live on February 9, and it runs through February 20. There are new craftables, new quests and quest rewards, and lots of love-ins happening across Norrath, so get out there and have fun! You can check out a write-up of this year’s events at EQ2i, and EQ2 Traders has images of the new crafted items, rewards, and purchasables.

Lucan D’Lere will be merging with Crushbone on February 16! For what to expect, check out Zam’s Server Merger article. Make sure that you read over the character name priority guidelines, and prepare for disruptions in access to chat channels, mail, and friends lists. While you shouldn’t experience any issues to housing or existing mail, I recommend taking the following steps just to cover all your bases:

• Make sure you’ve read all mail in your mailbox and retrieved all attachments. You may not be able to access messages immediately after the server comes up, so sort all that out beforehand.
• Save a copy of each character’s house layout just in case you find things are wonky when the merge is complete. You can save a layout by clicking the “Save Layout” button in your in-home house access window (type /house or right-click on the door).
• Log on each character before the servers come down for the merge. Name priority is given first to characters logged in within the past 60 days, then to the character with the most play-time. You can compare your characters to those on Crushbone by doing a character name search on EverQuest2.com. Click on the character names to compare the total time played.

The last bit of big news is a reminder that Destiny of Velious arrives February 22! Be sure to get your prelude quests wrapped up and your pre-order placed, then brace yourself for all the goodies that will come with the new expansion!

The highlights:

• New group instance: Zraxth’s Unseen Arcanum
• Spell visuals updated; many casting sounds reverted; many casting animations reverted
• New “Mount” and “Currency” tabs in the Character window free up bag space
• You can specify one mount as “active” and another as “appearance” — the best of both worlds!
• New outdoor areas in the largest homes in cities across Norrath
• Increased house item counts
• Click-to-cure functionality in group and raid windows
• Target and Implied Target windows show casting activities of NPC targets
• Marketplace items are searchable by name
• Woodworker-crafted totems now stack to 100 (NOT a retroactive change)
• Tradeskill fuels renamed to be more consistent across tiers
• Crafted ammo now stacks to 200
• Guild level progression smoothed out (Yay!! This change resulted in us gaining about a level and a half.)
• Guild Harvesting Depot amenity now holds 200 unique items (was 150)
• New house item rewards for Kingdom of Sky questlines
• New usable doors available from City Festival merchants
• More tiles available from Moonlight Enchantments merchants
• Interesting developments in Greater Faydark: Orcs are trying to burn down Kelethin, and kobolds have overrun the former location of Spire Shadow Outpost!

Click through to read the patch notes in full…

GU 57 goes live in a few short hours, and here are some highlights that may interest you:

• Regions of Interest: Many quests will now highlight areas on the map to show where updates can be obtained
• Total revamp to the UI appearance
• Inventory and Persona combined into new Character window
• Newer version of spells will overwrite older versions in hotbars instead of being inserted into a blank hotbar space
• Lots of classes have been redesignated as “neutral”
• Major spell effects revamp
• Inner zone travel locations now support path linking
• Appearance slots no longer restricted to level 20+
• Kunark writ agent in the guild hall now offers writs to New Halas citizens
• Harvesting NPCs won’t spam individual harvests anymore (yay!)
• LOTS of class progression/ability changes
• New tradeskill quests for level 10+ crafters
• New tradeskill quest lines in Butcherblock and Steamfont
• “Pristine” designation removed from all crafted items
• Gorowyn has been overhauled to ease travel within the city

Click through for the patch notes in full!

The long-awaited GU56 is hitting the live servers today, bringing new zones, changes to the travel system, and lots of other improvements and bug-fixes. You can read the patch notes here!

Some highlights:

• New starting zone: New Halas (in the Frostfang Sea)
• New “storyline” addition to the quest journal — make sure you’re using an updated mod!
• Travel system revamp:
  • Bells & carpets consolidated into one travel category
  • No need to harvest Blessed Shrubbery to travel to a druid ring
  • Internal zone travel access quests/location taggings are now optional
  • Several additional zones now have internal travel systems
  • Static Ulteran spire portals added to the few spire destinations that didn’t have them before
  • Call spells’ cast time reduced to 10 seconds
• Shader 3.0 is now available!
• Queen’s Colony and Outpost of the Overlord are no longer available as starting areas for new characters
• New “Render Mounts” option (Options > Display > Animation):
  • Render all mounts all the time
  • Hide mounts during combat
  • Hide mounts all the time
• Guild hall Hunter Hireling now returns tier 8 and tier 9 meats
• Carpets, discs, and cloud mounts all have Glide
• Harvesting Depots now also store world event raw harvests
• More red shiny collections for mastercrafters
• Mastercrafted items have been improved
• Research times of lower-level quests have been reduced

The servers are still down, but keep your eyes peeled; they should be coming up within the next hour or two!