There are three retailers that all have upped their release/shipping dates to Nov 8th/9th per the "publisher" as the email said.
Retailers don't up dates unless they are told. Smedly's statement is naturally ambigous, but yet doesn't deny the Nov 9th date.
Honestly, I feel the game's not ready and SOE will mostly likely shoot themselves in the foot in the race against WoW. But, that's just me. Others naturally feel the other way about it (most of which aren't in EQII beta naturally).
Heck, I can't even log in now due to the infamous "Creating entities" stuck bug that's currently pledging the forums.
*Edit; hum, think if the game's getting released here in a couple weeks, they'll finally turn on the ability to load custom UIs? With all the other problems and bugs in EQII, I don't think we'll see that until the first week of Nov at the very list. Most likely it'll be forgotten until a bit after release.
Not saying SOE isn't making a priority, just saying with them upping the date and the Devs were already working 12-14 hour days (plus weekends), I can see this easily slipping through the cracks.