Well, first of all, you should not be thinking of this as the release. This is an Open Beta where they also stated one of the goals was for stress testing. They will still do the packs on the actual release.
They are not having a cash shop currently due to the fact that there was not even a Closed Beta period, so they acknowledge that there is a lot of testing to be done. Putting a cash shop into the game during this period which is likely to have a ton of issues, one of which being that they are even testing if the item distribution from a cash shop will work correctly, would be viewed very negatively.
GF has also stated that if they can help it, there will not be a wipe. There will only be one if they can't really help it. They can't really be sure what issues will crop up, and if for instance a ton of people's accounts got completely screwed up to where they couldn't play anymore, a wipe would have to happen to remedy that. Anything that would happen which would require a wipe is not at all likely to happen, but the statement they issued used to be quite normal for betas to have. Not really sure why this is blowing up so much for this one.
I will agree, however, that an announcement like 2 hours before the open beta started was really weird, and I haven't really ever seen that happen before.
