The expansion's pre-order date has also been announced.

This evening two updates regarding the Destiny of Velious expansion came rolling in: the delay of its launch date and the date that pre-orders begin. The launch date has been pushed two weeks back to February 22, 2011. Announced on EQ2 Players, pre-orders for the expansion will begin this coming Tuesday, January 18th. Detailed pre-order information will be released the same day.

Dave "Smokejumper" Georgeson announced the launch date change on the official forums:

As you know, we’ve been working hard on the “Destiny of Velious” expansion pack. It was originally scheduled for release on Feb 8th, but after getting feedback from players, spending time playing the game internally, and discussing ways to make things better, we’ve decided to move the release date back to Feb 22nd instead.

Feb 22nd gives us another couple of weeks for polish, tuning, and a honing of the fun factor for the expansion. We think the wait will be well worthwhile.

Check EverQuest2.com for the announcement on pre-order dates! And also stay tuned for an announcement about a raft of cool events coming out in the week after DoV becomes available!

On a side note, we’ll be adding another batch of players into the Closed Beta on Jan 24th, so if you put in an application and haven’t been accepted yet, don’t give up yet. Your time may be coming!

We'll keep you up-to-date with the latest expansion news as it rolls in!