Errata is a part of complex tabletop games. WoTC is pretty freakin' brilliant at releasing mostly functional product compared to some other popular game publishers *cough*Games Workshop*cough*. Play testing is great, and it catches lots of stuff, but it doesn't catch everything, it's the nature of the process. The system doesn't really get stress tested until it hits the general public and the min-max fairies and language nazis get at it, folks who do such a wonderful job (no sarcasm) finding loopholes, RAW issues, and other assorted weirdness.
IMO, the game as written is perfectly functional. Not perfectly balanced maybe, nor perfect period (hah), but perfectly functional. D&D is a game played in a lot of ways, for a lot of different reasons, by a lot of different folks. Good as it might be, it can't be everything to everyone, and for those folks for whom it isn't doing X, Y, or Z, there are house rulings and outright hacks. I don't think that's a bad thing, nor a failing of the published rules.
IMO, the game as written is perfectly functional. Not perfectly balanced maybe, nor perfect period (hah), but perfectly functional. D&D is a game played in a lot of ways, for a lot of different reasons, by a lot of different folks. Good as it might be, it can't be everything to everyone, and for those folks for whom it isn't doing X, Y, or Z, there are house rulings and outright hacks. I don't think that's a bad thing, nor a failing of the published rules.