I have pre-ordered MTM and ATS both from play.com, and both times they came on the day of release. I guess Play must have felt lenient this time round and gave it me two days early! I heard that LP.com orders notoriously arrive late (and they cost more!) so didn't purchase it from there.
My preorders are always from linkinpark.com, and like I said earlier, they've always been days early getting to me, including LT.
I'd like to concur with the 1000+ year old Time Lord. I've been pre-ordering LP albums from the LP website since Reanimation and I always get my albums before the actual release.
So much for pre-ordering. I've pre-ordered MTM, ATS and LT and all have come late. I'm still yet to receive LT, despite the Australian release being the 22nd.
None of my preorders have come late, except for MTM which had a factory error so they couldn't ship that edition out. But that doesn't count. I have had several that have come early.
Mine is on the right hand side. I'm a bit dissapointed in this package though, considering ATS, LT album package is a giant step backwards. I do like the art work for it though.
I saw some copies in Asda with the text on the left side after I read about this, but I've pre-ordered the album and haven't got my physical copy yet. Although now I hope that I get the left side copy as it sounds like it could be a rare version of the album.