Pre-orders are like waiting lists for products that are in production. Those on the list get the items before any other orders, when the items are ready. This is not a normal retail experience, as often when pre-orders go live, the item hasn't been made yet.
Your order will be shipped when all items arrive at the warehouse from the factory.
We often aren't able to guarantee a date for when the items are ready as sometimes issues occur with printing or manufacture that cause a delay, or shipping to the warehouse takes longer than expected due to issues beyond our control. We try and provide an estimated time of the year (Spring, Fall or the nearest month etc), as we aim to have production organised for that period of time and do update customers regularly if that changes due to unforeseen circumstances.
Also, often the more inclusive bundles of items, although they are a pre-order, may get their entire bundle later than most of the individual item pre-order customers - this is because the bundle has to wait for the final item to be produced in the factory to arrive at the warehouse to be packed with the order and then be shipped.
The advantage of a pre-order aside from getting it before more people, is that often there are items reserved solely for pre-orders as a thank you for trusting us to produce the bundle in however much time we need. We treat pre-orders as a shipment priority and have delayed retail launches in the past of some of our biggest franchises, so that pre-orders get their copies first.
If you have pre-ordered from us, we'd like to give a big THANK YOU from the whole team at Modiphius :)