[RANT ON]
I'm getting REALLY sick of this "hard release date" crap. Even though WotC makes (apparently) a big deal of having these dates set in stone, plenty of places (nowhere near me) still break the dates, suffering apparently no repercussions. What are they going to do anyway? Seriously. Take away the products? Right...because they make so much money they can afford to just not let them sale their books. Uh-huh.
I have just one question for WotC: What is the point of the hard release date?
I would really like to know. I asked WotC Customer Service and all I got was a blank stare and mumbling. I've heard before that it's done to "insure that the smaller retail outlets can compete with the bigger ones by making sure they have the products at the same time." Whatever. If a guy came out of an alley and said, "Psst, hey, I've got Masters of the Wild here, two weeks early," I would buy it. I don't care where I buy it. I buy it from the first place I call that says they will sale it to me. The above reason doesn't hold water anyway since tons of places are releasing it early anyway. While I'm venting, what happened to the releasing everything a week and half early to make up for this "small vs. big" retailer disparity? Now all of a sudden everything is going to get released two weeks into the month? WTF???
Is it just me, or do these hard dates piss you off even more than the huge amount of errata? Perhaps a poll is in order...
[/RANT OFF]