Are there out of game commands...
 

Are there any commands that can be ran from a command prompt, to notify players that the server is being shutdown or re-started, or for any number of other reasons?

Helno
Server OP
EQAdvantage

Not that I know of :?

You can telnet to the world server port... (9000). Wrold will accept an incoming telnet session assuming your given the account an admin password in the database (not the regular login server password). There are a # of commands you can execute from there... kick, ban, shutdown, broadcast, etc...