Seriously. You have Mythic's GM being extraordinarily interactive and participatory into the wee hours of the morning, but speaking very cryptically ... combined with some posters thinking they've "solved the riddle," others ranting, others posting walls-of-text-that-they-somehow-think-will-be-more-convincing-to-someone-in-charge-than-the-prior-wall-of-text, others just getting on to the boards and trying to figure out what this is all about.
My hypothesis, similar to what lots of people on the boards have said, is that the rush for open beta and headstart codes over the last two weeks has led to retailers completely misreading demand signals and overinventorying SE boxes. Probably had lots of preorders through last weekend, then maybe saw a surge of cancellations through launch day (as folks got one headstart code to work and then canceled others ... or maybe people used the open beta as their "Free trial" and decided it wasn't for them and then cancelled). Then, come launch day, their shelves did not clear as expected, and they have some threat over Mythic (not accepting any WAR shipments for some period of time? some more generic action on EA in general? some sort of liquidated damages in the whole "partner" agreement they put together for the Pre-Order) that's led Mythic to adopt the 7 a.m. cutoff as the least worst option
And now there's this confused period where no one can get on because of the server downtime, so, like Tree, no one without a CD validation knows whether they can actually get on or not ... but once it's early afternoon, the hordes will start getting restless. If the servers aren't up because of maintenance, there will be annoyed people but it's least it's "equal bummage." If the servers come up, the validation issue isn't resolved, and the UPS and FedEx trucks have finished their routes and people haven't gotten their boxes ... there will be some bitterly upset diehard CE fans who will get very vocal (although then threads'll get locked too prolly). Sigh. Never knew how exciting launch weekends could be.