This August to be precise. The Players Handbook was rolled out for GenCon 2000, so I believe the official release date was August 9.
-- Now, you can argue with a straight face that 3e really began about a year and a half earlier; IMS the initial design meetings with Williams, Tweet and Cook got under way in the spring of 1998, and by GenCon 1999 (when 3e was announced) the system as we know it was essentially complete. WotC took a full year to roll it out because (1) they wanted to get it right, and (2) they wanted to whip up a frenzy of interest -- a strategy at which they were really quite successful. (Remember the year-long countdown in Dragon magazine?)
It's still six months away. Just... huh.
Doug M.
