Here are the game update notes (taken from the patcher) as EverQuest's 18th expansion, Veil of Alaris, launches.

Note: Servers are expected to come back up at around 8:00 A.M. Pacific Time (11:00 A.M. Eastern Time).

"It's beautiful, you know," said Chief Engineer Dougal.  The Veilbreaker, finally complete, tugged gently at its moorings.  "Thank you for coming to give us Brell's word.  Please tell him that all of Ak'Anon is grateful for his continued interest in our lives.  We could not have completed this without his aid and the help of Norrath's heroes."

Emissary Olim's face turned somber as he looked down at the gnome.  "Child, do not believe that we have granted you a favor.  Crossing the veil will likely cause you great suffering.  You go to face an enemy that the gods fear, one that may have destroyed a god already.  We have done you no favor by coming here to Steamfont."

"You don't understand us, do you," the engineer said, smiling up at the winged Telmira.  "Without challenge, without excitement and discovery, our lives have little meaning.  The people that have come from all over Norrath to help with the project know that danger awaits them.  After all," Dougal laughed, "when has interaction with our gods not meant danger?  Fear not, we will break the veil and discover the truth, and we will do so with joy.  Thank you and thank Brell for us."

The EverQuest team is proud to announce the launch of EverQuest: Veil of Alaris, the eighteenth expansion for EverQuest!

(Full patch notes after the jump.)

*** EverQuest: Veil of Alaris Features ***

The following features are available to players who have purchased Veil of Alaris:
- The level cap is now 95, with hundreds of new spells and alternate advancement abilities available.
- Items can now be activated inside of containers (backpacks, pouches, crates, etc.) as long as the item is not flagged "must equip."
- Customizable guild plots and guild halls are now available.  To purchase one, go to the neighborhood door in the guild lobby.  Your guild must have at least ten members to purchase a plot (unless you own a guild neighborhood).
- Custom guild halls can be furnished with equivalent items from the old guild hall as well as some new additions.  Anyone who owns Veil of Alaris can place items (if your guild permissions allow it).
- Guilds can now place special guild trophies that will give tribute-style benefits to members who have opted in.
- Several creature types from the continent of Alaris can be stuffed and crafted into mounted heads for placement in your home.
- 12 new zones contain thousands of new creatures to encounter and hundreds of new items to obtain.


*** Guilds and Guild Halls ***

The following features are available to all players:
- Guild permissions are now customizable per guild rank, and the number of ranks has been increased to 8.
- The default guild rank permissions are based roughly on the current guild rank permissions.
- Added in new guild permissions, such as Speak In Guild Chat, that can be assigned to the different ranks.
- Rank names can now be customized per guild.
- Members no longer need to be online when you promote or demote them.
- Added new real estate access tab: Owner's Associations.  This will allow players to modify the permissions of the owner's guild ranks and the owner's fellowship.
- Added two new real estate access groups: Co-Owner and Acquaintance.
- Made numerous minor enhancements to the UIs for guild management, guild banking, and real estates.
- The left-hand door from the guild lobby will take you to the new guild hall (if your guild has a custom guild hall).  The right-hand door will always take you to the standard guild hall.


*** Parcel System ***

The following features are available to all players:
- Added an items and money delivery system.
- When you have a new parcel, an icon will appear in your player window.
- Players can have a maximum of 50 items in their mailbox.  Items will only remain in your mailbox for 30 days before they are deleted!
- Items can be sent to other players (or yourself) from certain merchants.  These are available in major cities.
- Items are delivered to their target player whether that player is online or offline.
- Stacks of items may be sent and count as one item in the mailbox, but they may only be retrieved as one stack (you can't split stacks from the mailbox).
- The following NPCs are parcel NPCs.  The word "Parcel" will be added to their alt tag for easy finding in a future patch.
---Plane of Knowledge: Caden Zharik
---Surefall Glade: Grathin Nilm
---Crescent Reach: Merchant Rehema
---Paineel: Henly Nictropus
---Oggok: Klob Pulp
---Neriak - Commons: Lynsalai T`Nyal
---Grobb: Grallvek
---East Cabilis: Klok Faziz
---Ak'Anon: Zenrel Ottonoggin
---East Freeport: Lindie Rains
---South Qeynos: Ren Pinemyer
---Shar Vahl: Laanas Sejiir
---The Erudin Palace: Sparlus Penfold
---Northern Felwithe: Laernian Caelael
---Halas: Grots
---North Kaladim: Marsha Stonepenner
---Greater Faydark: Merchant Vaelias
---Rivervale: Teelie Meegles
---Rathe Mountains: Zok Malka
---Sunrise Hills: Postmaster Aric Songfairer



*** Hot Bars and Hot Buttons ***

The following features are available to all players:
- Hot bars are now resizable and can be resized to horizontal, vertical, or tiled.
- Increased the number of hot bar buttons to 12.
- Added more hot button bars.  There are now a total of 10 hot button bars available.
- Added the ability to link items on hot bars (instead of just slots).  An item link will always activate that item regardless of its position in your inventory.  Slots can still be linked by holding the alt key while clicking and holding on the item.
- Hot buttons now have right-click and hold menus to allow for customizations in size, icon, labels and more.
- Added visible cool down timers for buttons that have a time period before the next allowable use.  The color for this can be set in the options window under the "Colors" tab.  The color that is set for the cool down is called "Cooldown Overlay".
- Added the ability to display key mappings in the top right corner of a hot button.


*** Tradeskills ***

- New recipes are available for fletching, poisions, tinkering, food and drink.
- More than 50 new potions are available to be crafted.
- New ornamentations are available for crafting.  Some are new, and some use classic weapon appearances from the past.
- Research recipes are now available for 372 level 81-85 spells.
- New sets of Glorious cultural armor can now be crafted.  Only new Numinous or Veiled seals can be used in the new armor!
- Jewelcrafters can now make jewelry from enchanted Alaran metal.


*** Items ***

- Created a new augmentation slot type (20) that is used for ornaments.
- The Veilbreaker Executive Escape Device's recast time has been reduced to two hours.
- Fixed an issue with the winged mounts not summoning the high speed version of the mount for those who qualify.


*** Quests & Events ***

- The Essence of Dreams - Corrected a reset problem in Sanctum Somnium raid #2.
- Corrected an error in the "Dreadslayer" server first title for House of Thule.
- Shared tasks in House of Thule and Veil of Alaris will now grant experience to players who are present in the zone when their final chests are opened or final dialogs are triggered.  Be sure to wait for your companions before you finish your task!


*** Spells ***

- Druids - Moved the damage absorption portion of the Adrenaline line to slot 11 in order to minimize conflicts.
- Rogues - Corrected a problem causing the smokescreen line of traps to be triggered by non-combat NPCs (such as mounts).
- Shadowknights - Removed the cast times of Despairing Darkness and Insidious Blight and increased the recast times.
- Wizards - Corrected a problem that was causing Vortex Effect counters to be used by spells that were not enhanced by them.
- Corrected a bug that was causing cure spells to ignore the number of counters on detrimental spells.  They will now only cure spells when they remove more counters than the spell has on it.


*** Miscellaneous ***

- Improved fog and blending of fog in certain areas.
- Social hotkeys can now be aborted by right clicking them.
- Added a key binding option to the commands section of the key maps called "Stop Action".  This functions as /stopcast, /stopsong, and cancels the most recently-run social (if it's still running).
- Fixed various minor bugs relating to languages.
- Fixed many issues with boats.


*** UI ***

- Container windows will also now allow for resizing in all directions before snapping back to the closest fit.
- Added the ability to define which borders are sizable to the UI XML.  Hot button bars are using these properties.
- Added "Style_ClientMovable" to "Screen" that allows resizable windows with no title bar to be moved by dragging from any non-occupied bit of client area.  The new hot bars use this to allow them to be moved while being resizable as well.
- Added the "HotButton" type that defines the composite 3 button structure of the new hot buttons.
- Added "SnapToChildren" to TileLayoutBox that marks the box to first lay out UI elements normally then extend the non-primary axis to encompass all of the children (including padding).  This has been applied to the hot button windows.
- Added "UseInLayoutVertical" and "UseInLayoutHorizontal" to "ScreenPiece".  This removes a UI element from being considered in a window that resizes to the size of its children and implemented them in the container window.
- Added "AutoStretchVertical" and "AutoStretchHorizontal" to "ScreenPiece".  This breaks apart the "AutoStretch" variable into the two axes for better control of the window.  The container window now uses this technology.
- Added "Style_TransparentControl" to "Control" that allows events sent to a window to pass through them (but not the things inside of them).  Hot button bars and the spell gem window have been updated to use this.
- Fixed some typos that were causing UIErrors.txt to get filled with invalid errors.
- /copylayout now has three new checkboxes that allow you to specify copying hot buttons (not just their layouts, but their actual contents), hot button loadouts, and socials.  The copies for all three of these are actually merges such that they only overwrite buttons, loadouts, and socials if they already exist on a slot by slot basis.
- Added EQTypes for hot buttons and the pet's target hit point percentage label.
- Fixed many long standing minor UI bugs.


- Added -
EQUI_IconSelectionWnd.xml
EQUI_SendMoneyWnd.xml

- Changed -
EQUI.xml
EQUI_Animations.xml
EQUI_BuffWindow.xml
EQUI_CastSpellWnd.xml
EQUI_Container.xml
EQUI_GuildBankWindow.xml
EQUI_GuildManagementWnd.xml
EQUI_HotButtonWnd.xml
EQUI_Inventory.xml
EQUI_LayoutCopyWnd.xml
EQUI_LootWnd.xml
EQUI_MarketplaceWnd.xml
EQUI_MerchantWnd.xml
EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml
EQUI_PlayerWindow.xml
EQUI_RealEstateItemsWnd.xml
EQUI_RealEstateManageWnd.xml
EQUI_RealEstateNeighborhoodWnd.xml
EQUI_RealEstatePlotSearchWnd.xml
EQUI_RealEstatePurchaseWnd.xml
EQUI_SocialEditWnd.xml
EQUI_Templates.xml
EQUI_TributeBenefitWnd.xml
EQUI_TributeMasterWnd.xml
EQUI_TributeTrophyWnd.xml
SIDL.xml

- Removed -
EQUI_GuildTributeMasterWnd.xml


*** Previously Updated ***

- Gnomish workers will no longer hang out under the Lifter.  They will now appreciate it from afar.


- The EverQuest Team