I completely understand where you are coming from with your post Relikk, and in a different industry I deal with the exact same flow matrix. There are things that are beyond my control and sometimes I have to push back a delivery time. I also know this a reality, so I don't tell my potential or paying customers that the delivery of what they want is on Date #1 and then push it back to Date #2 and then Date #3. Maybe I am oversimplifying it by comparing two unrealistic situations.
The end-result, though, is that there will be patches and updates both immediately following the release and in the months that follow similar to what we have seen now. Balance in a controlled environment with semi-trusted testers is one thing, but releasing the product to a population that has a large portion of people who look for exploits is another. In my opinion, no amount of testing will find everything, and everything they find, someone will find another way of getting around.
I, as a consumer, would have preferred that they had decided to ship the product and say "Ok, we know this list exists. We will fix this with the release, but items B, C, D will be on a patch on this week, E, F, G will be on this patch, and H, I, J will come in January - just like they "fixed" the class balances as they went. When I worked on two different major mods for the Digital Anvil/Microsoft Game "Freelancer" (Space Sim), I faced deadlines, betas, fixes and patches just like what you had discussed. I worked my 40-60 hour a week job, put in another 15-20 hours of coding, modelling and skinning for the mods and still managed to make time to have some fun. I actually had to write a mod to mod with, which was a headache in itself. So, in some frame of mind, I feel like I can empathize with the dev crew for this.
However, with that empathy comes a desire to have it out in a more timely fashion. My displeasure comes not so much from the fact that the release is in January, but in the fact that it was originially scheduled for Late June, then mid August, then "sometime in October", then firmly November 28th (or was it the 30th?) and now late January (the 23rd, allegedly, which makes sense as a Tuesday). In my opinion, it would have been much better had they not even implied a date, but said that it was coming, and we are in Stage X of development and testing. It's the rollbacks that have me flustered.
And when I get home tonight, I'll still be logging in, I'll still be playing the game, just like I do every night.