I do agree with some of this, but not all of it.
I was one of the people who constantly said I was annoyed at the amount of credits per hat when it took us an entire day to get 2000 credits with NPCs. That being said, having ICON run around saying "THE SHELLS ARE COMING, THE SHELLS ARE COMING" took me by surprise and when it happened - I was like a little girl in a candy shop. However, my interest very quickly fell when it became a fight. People went into rooms telling people to sc**w off because someone took two in a room. People were calling others names for not moving when one went under a character and people just became flat out obnoxious and greedy.
A little more planned out would've been great, such as a 50-100 shell limit for the day. The fact that people are walking around with 30,000 credits now doesn't make me happy, because now when something comes out, there's no longer the economy. There's people who can afford to spend 4 hours in "Super Shell" room (Quest Quarters, Bazaar) and those who work or were constantly trapped in a room that fell from five people to three, cause nobody really played alone. So a new item comes out, the 30,000 credited people can go buying multiple items while the others have to run around and hope it doesn't leave the catalogue before it's too late.
The fun part about BETA was that although people didn't have credits, the economy was created in an amazing way. People saw their credits at 2,500 and instantly thought, "Okay, I have to get Mickey Ears and... I think I want the tiara first!" and that's TOTALLY fair. Sure, nobody expected the flip hat to retire so soon, but people made their choice when they purchased their hat - In the end, they got the hat they truly wanted and you should never stock up on something that you assume will have value - I'm telling you now, the Mickey Ears will not.
I'm guilty of keeping a few extra Mickey Ears, firewalls and ice cream carts in my inventory just because I wanted to be prepared but I do not think anybody deserves to the right to call it unfair just because they didn't want the flip hat in the first place. One thing I said to a friend of mine when the flip hat retired was, when noticing how many people put it on after that, "HAH everyone's wearing a flip hat now... What show off's" because it's true. The flip hat now is a call for attention and the only reason I haven't taken mine off is because I wore it the second I bought it, while everyone else was prancing around with Mickey Ears.
I, too, asked Kevin directly, in the shoutbox, whether things would leave without our knowledge and he said they wouldn't. Tons of people saw this and the next day, it happened anyway. I'll tell you I was slightly disappointed in him for going back on his word but in the end, the economy has to start somewhere and so it did.