There are plenty of speculation threads about difficulty. Some say 10x, some say 50x. I am thinking somewhere around 40x to start with, and keep increasing as the months go on. As for  shipping, no one has received one yet as they are scheduled to be shipped early November. Josh state a while ago that they want to have all pre-orders out by December (not sure if this is still true since they have more pre-orders) and eventually want customers to be able to order and the items be shipped out within the next day. I would guess if you pre-ordered now you would receive it sometime around January. Just a guess though.