And this is why: so that you don’t scatter all of your monsters throughout the book. And before you ask, When would this matter? The answer is, it matters when you know you need a dragon, or a giant, or whatever for an encounter – but you don’t know which kind of monster would best suit it. It’s much easier to figure out when your dragons are all organized as Dragon (Green), Dragon (Red), Dragon (White) or whatever.
You get the impression that WoTC kind of resents still having to sell actual books.
It’ been painfully obvious they’ve been trying to move EVERYTHING to the online rental “subscription” space. Unfortunately for them, DnD Beyond is apparently as buggy as this print indexing.
They’ll have to pry my original Monster Manual from my cold, dead hands if they want me to give it up. And I don’t even play anymore.
There’s a meta-quest for you that practically writes itself: Adventurers need to seek out the Original Tome of MacGuffin, to combat the bastardized practices put forth by the current corrupted magisterium.
Book four of His Dark Materials?
You just described the Council of Trent
As far as I can tell, WotC has simply hired a lot of people to work on the game, who never played it, and don’t care about it.
I had just assumed it was all being done by A.I. with a quick proof to check for rule consistency and make sure they didn’t hallucinate a book not yet published.
But yes, that work is likely being done by people who don’t play the game.