Regarding pre-load of the game, It's a bit more awkward than you think.
For example, say they wanted to allow us to pre-download the game. Do they disable the "play" button when they enable game download? They probably don't want to turn off the ability to play something that people already have access to. In fact there could possibly be things on steam's side that wouldn't let them do that.
Do they make a new entry in your steam library to allow two instances, kinda like skyrim and skyrim special edition? Be able to play the early access and download the release? is it worth doing just for a few hours of gameplay? What will they do with the early access instance once release comes? Take up space on everyone's hard drive?
Given Larian's reputation and integrety as a company, I'm pretty willing to bet that they've already gone over all these options and have gone with what they believe to be the best one for everyone. I'm personally going to download the update when I get up in the morning and get to it at my leisure. It's going to be a great experience either way.
