Error 1017 after about 100 attempts so its not timed out its actually down upon letting it sit there after 4 seconds of getting error message its forcing a log out with error time out.
Didn't they say they were updating their code every day from 5-7 AM Pacific time? I thought I read somewhere that it would always be down during that time period, and the error you're seeing is likely to be expected. I'd try again in about an hour to make sure that daily build has completed.
They posted the information here: https://www.everquest.com/news/eq-beta-client-help-2017 Basically, there is a section that talks about 1017 error. This is what it says: "What time is it? If between 5AM and 7AM PT, please wait until 7AM and update your client. We run an automated update every morning that pushes out the latest to beta."
May have just reporting the issue as i could log in 5 mins prior to the error. Which was 9 am est time after 9 was rejected login. So it may be that hehe just posted in case it was something else. Patcher had shown no updates.