With all the recent
rage quit drama about people/outfits pulling the plug because this game being "unfinished" and feature X/Y/Z still not into this game, this video might give us some perspective.
Although it does a lousy job of illustrating the passion that lies underneath a product like Planetside 2, this video probably gives us a good idea of the challenges SOE devs are facing every day and the model that lies behind deliberately releasing an "unfinished" product. It's called
"Agile software development" and probably was chosen by SOE because it works well with the F2P business model.
In this video: "Product Owner" = Higby/Smedley, "Stakeholder" = We, the players, "User Stories" = Planetside 2 features and "Product Backlog" = Roadmap.