but what angers people why is this work not done in the past years
The people that are angered by it do not understand development cycles or software/game development in general.
8 years may seem like a long time, but its important to remember that they have had to:
-Design, build, and implement and entirely new, modern, and robust engine which would also entail:
(1) implementation of a new physics engine
(2) AI engine
(3) graphics engine
And then building out all the systems that would go into the game itself, UI screens, textures, models, voice acting lines, all the scripts, rough passes at balancing, crafting, economy simulation, battles, etc. etc. etc. Just looking at the dev blogs over the eons, its easy to tell that almost the entirety of every system has gone under at least one revision.
When you work on the same thing for long enough, what might seem fine or acceptable to you - due to your experience - could be untenable to someone who hasn't touched it before.
And especially for any sort of technical backbone, any work done on it has an extremely high probability of affecting other attached systems.
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Early Access is both a blessing, and a curse. I've been blessed to have done paid QA testing, application/invite based alpha/beta, buy-in EA(one game I was extremely passionate about required the purchase of a $100+ bundle in order to get beta access), free EA, discounted EA, etc.
On one hand, its an easy way to mark your game as unfinished - but still get it in the hands of as many people as possible to ensure the game works as intended and get extremely valuable feedback. Some developers leave games in EA forever and barely make progress. Some developers use EA the way it should be used, and make regular changes to the game based on the experiences of those players(like TW is currently doing, thankfully).
On the other hand, some developers abuse EA to release subpar products that would otherwise not be excused.
Depending on the developer's approach to EA, you'll get different crowds of people, but every approach will always have its own backlash associated with it. It is inevitable.