So there I am, casually slapping around giants in Sinking Sands, when the world goes black.  I come to in a sumptuous room decorated in Maj'Dul style.  A pretty Dark Elf is leaning over me.  "GOTCHA!" said Kiara.

"Holy Tunare, give a girl some warning next time.  Hey, this place is nice!" 

"Take a look around while I get ready for the birthday party," Kiara said, wandering into the bedroom.

The Community Lounge is a private zone on all servers used by Guides, GM, Devs, and Community Managers with a wicked sense of humor.  It's here that the Everquest II 4th Birthday Parties were (and are to be) held on all servers.  It's a fun place! 

The luxurious indoor swimming pool is called the wishing pool and has fishing node (quite contested when the zone is busy) which gives fun, no-zone goodies.  There are lots of clickables around the room which produced a couple of house items and some fireworks.  A lamp spawns a djinn story teller, and in the back of the main room are musicians and dancing halfling girls.

UPDATE!  Now with the actual Dire Bear Mount pics!

Much recent discussion has centered on the The Shadow Odyssey premiums, especially the dire bear mount and pet which is only available with the retail box version of the expansion.  This item scales with the level of the caster:  at low levels it's a pet, and as your character grows it becomes a mount, becoming more and more useful to you.  Allakhazam has acquired exclusive pictures and video of the level 80 Ykeshan Warbear!

Disclaimer:  all this information is from the TSO Beta server, and may change at launch.

SOE podcast #50 is now live and contains interviews that will be of special interest to EverQuest II and Star Wars Galaxies fans.

This is our milestone Podcast #50! Tune in for an interview about EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey, and an interview with Kelly “Valara” Knox, the SWG Community Manager. Timmy tells us about his Halloween. Ashlanne gets her gamer card back and more!

The EQII interview is with designers Kander and Ilucide. You can listen to it here.

UPDATE!  Due to overwhelming response, we have acquired five MORE retail keys, bringing the total number of available keys to ten!  Be sure to enter!

To celebrate EQII's fourth birthday, we have acquired five ten highly coveted The Shadow Odyssey RETAIL KEYS. That's right, RETAIL KEYS, which will not only give your account full TSO access, but give you the highly coveted Dire Bear Mount and Pet!

And, in the spirit of birthday parties, all you have to do to enter is show up. Follow these easy instructions:

1. If you have not already, register on Allakhazam.com.
2. Make sure your email address is correct and that your email filter won't throw calthine@allakhazam.com into the trash.
3. Post in this thread.

The five year Veteran Rewards, which were delayed until the launch of The Shadow Odyssey, have been announced!  Besides the expected experience postions and some lovely fluff, this year includes an Adventure Vitality orb!

That's right, it's EverQuest II's fourth birthday, and Kiara, Grimwell, and Amnerys from the Community Relations team are throwing a party on your server! 

Don your most festive attire and commemorate the event with us in the Community Lounge, where you can share celebratory food and drink, enjoy the confetti machine, dance along with the maestro, and even have a pillow fight. Plus, you never know who might pop in to join in the fun!

Find the date and time for your server at EQII Players !

November is always an interesting month for EverQuest II considering the anniversary is on the 8th. Though this year, fans of EverQuest II have The Shadow Odyssey to be excited about. Having been a part of the EQ2 community on such a personal level, for so long -- it's difficult for me to remain neutral when I tell you about how creative the community can get. So tonight, I'm just going to show you.

After the jump you'll see a trailer created by Jessica Nelson that will blow your mind.

MMO Portal has put together its 2009 MMO Calendar featuring autographed artwork from numerous games. The list includes Age of Conan, DC Universe Online, Dofus, EVE Online, EverQuest II, Free Realms, Guild Wars, Pirates of the Burning Sea, RuneScape, The Agency, Warhammer Online and World of Warcraft.

All of the proceeds go directly to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which treats children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases.

Also, everyone who purchases a calendar will be entered to win one of 10 prizes for each game, including boxed copies, premium accounts, 30- and 60-day passes, closed beta accounts and more. More information can be found here.

About a dozen fansite folks milled around excitedly in the Moors of Ykesha as Christine “Kiara” Renzetti summoned us in from all over Norrath for the Beta tour of The Shadow Odyssey.  Moors of Ykesha is the (very) large overland solo-content zone for the expansion.  Current estimates give the number of quests available around 400.  We were greeted by Lindsay Morgan  “Miss Doomcookie” Lockhart, the zone designer and the developer responsible for all the pre-TSO lore at EQII Players.  She told us that the Ykeshan landmass is about the same size as Fens of Nathsar, but there's action in the waters, making it actually larger.  The continent was once attached to the south east of the Desert of Ro, and is where Grobb and Gutka used to be.  It's home to Clan Ykesha and the Rellosian Ogres, who turned from Rallos Zek to Cazic Thule to survive the Greenmist.  It's also home to the Gunthak pirates.  

Morgan also worked on the Signature quest, and tells us it involves some of the toughest zones in the expansion.  At launch there will also be six new Heritage Quests which tie in EverQuest lore, and of course two new Diety quest lines. 

We were joined by Brett “Breb” Schienert as Kiara began taking us through the exciting new group content.  These zones all scale to the level of the first person zoning in (most start at level 50), so remember to mentor down before you zone.  There are a ton of new collection quests, and it was fun watching Niami Denmother scamper from shiny to shiny. 

Scheduled Maintenance - 11/03/2008 4:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time

Beginning at 4am PST on Monday 11/03/08, all log-in servers will be undergoing maintenance.  During this maintenance you will be unable to log in to all games and account management tools.  (Please note:  Players already logged in will not be knocked offline as long as they remain in a single zone.)

We expect this maintenance to take approximately 1 hour. Please watch the game forums & website for further updates regarding this maintenance.

We apologize for this interruption and will resume log-in services as soon as the maintenance is completed.

- SOE Operations team

Source:  the Network Status page.