Good decision or not, they went back on a promise. The week before they were doing a very heavy sell on the founders packs, even implying that they would get in the game before the starter packs. They have also stated that with the new influx of people from starter packs the servers will most likely have login queues and will be unstable. I've been playing since the beta started, and have been looking forward to release for over a year. I'm worried about the server stability and actually being able to play, as I've taken three days off work.
They are expecting 10x the number of people that played in the last beta. If anyone recalls, Fort Sterling routinely had 400+ people and would crash. On the last day of this beta there were large castle fights with about 300 people on the map and no one could move due to server side lag. They have systematically gone and deleted all the posts on their forums about this lag and how it was basically unplayable during their last "event". Their twitch stream that was watching the fight moved to another zone to try and hide how bad it really was. Add 10x the players to this and the "Head start" will be unplayable.
Their official FAQ about founders packs states "It also grants access to our Final Beta Beta and a head start at the release of the game on July 17, 2017."
Reference for the quote above:
Brand New Sandbox MMORPG 2017 | Albion Online (click "What is a Legendary Founder Pack?")
I'm definitely still going to play, I'm just worried that my time off work is going to be spent sitting in queues and lagging out after having expected to get in before the masses.
Edit: Just to clarify I don't care about any gameplay advantage getting in early might provide. I'm in a decent guild and we will be fine either way. I just would like a smooth experience the first couple days, as once Wednesday rolls around the game will be unplayable for a while unless they make massive updates to their servers.