Yeah they brought the release forward because the game, while not 100% finished, was floating around the Internet already. If you believe the drama some guy masqueraded as a girl to convince a tester to hand over the files. Could happen to anyone right?
Mining and hammering stuff is a bit slow. I guess that'll speed up with stone and metal tools? Nice to be able to chop a tree at the base and have the whole lot fall down though.
Really looking forward to the weapons late game, and the boss fights. While it might look fairly basic graphically the game still has decent physics, so things like arrows, flails and grenades seem like a lot of fun to use.
When you make complete rooms in your house Deetz you encourage NPCs to take up residence. So we'll need to tidy the place up a bit to gain access to nurses and arms dealers.
Wiki to read over :
http://terraria.wikia.com/wiki/Items