So I just saw that Wizards has released the Vault of the Dracolich adventure for 5e - for $5 on DriveThruRPG. This seems a little odd to me since 5e hasn't even been released yet. I thought it was supposed to be their next 5e mass test release, but it since it costs $5, I'm now wondering what is up.

Does this seem weird to anyone else?

Wizards has been releasing a handful of adventures with stats for both the 5e open beta that's going on now, and for 4e. Most of these are Forgotten Realms adventures that lay the groundwork for the changes happening to the Forgotten Realms setting for 5e.

It's a way they can test the new 5e rules and try to get the fanbase of Forgotten Realms to understand the new direction of that IP.

Paying $5 to betatest for them doesn't seem like something I'd want to do.

The Friday group has started a Pathfinder Shatter Star campaign. I still like the 3.5 (Pathfinder 3.75) rules compared to 4 so I hope 5 reverses course some.

I have to agree with you there. I loved 3.5. Pathfinder seems like it's worked out a lot of the kinks 3.5 had. 4.0 felt nerfy, like it's supposed to be an MMO or something. When we did part of the Beta/Alpha (forget which level it was. The adventure where you attack these caves of unutterable evil or whatever it was called - a redone 1E adventure) for 5E, I liked some of the changes they'd made. Wasn't entirely sold, but I liked more where it was going.

The 5e adventure I ran (the one you're talking about) was from the first 5e public playtest packet. I followed most of the packets as they were released. The game changed a lot over the course of the playtest. I'll be interested to see where it stands when it's finally done.

D&D 5e basic was officially released today: http://media.wizards.com/downloads/dnd/DnDBasicRules.pdf

I'll be reading through it on the plane on the way there.