Feldon 
If you’ve ever wondered why EU patches and Game Updates always seem to take twice as long as US ones, you’re not alone. We’ve never been able to understand why the files aren’t sent earlier, or some steps taken ahead of time to make the update more quickly. Apparently there is some work being done.
From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:
The international team has developed a way to parallel process some of the update in the future, so we should hopefully see an update speed increase for non-US servers.
Taylen of Splitpaw asked:
Does that mean we would go live at the same time, or just our down time would be shorter?
which elicited this response from SmokeJumper:
Down time shorter with the eventual objective of simultaneous.