1. Nobody really knows ... and nobody will ever know.
There certainly is some big progress, when you compare curent game and patch 1 ... they are in some ways completely different games. O_o
But how many of those changes were based on our feedback ... and how many od them was planned anyway? We can only speculate.
2. Depends ...
From wich part of Early Access?
First patch X release ... a lot ...
Last patch X release ... certainly not as much ...
Quite honestly i would not be surprised if Last Patch would be identical to Release version, only a little smaller in matter of content (races, subclasses, followers, items, maybe even some side quests we dont have right now, or dialogue options ... stuff like that)
3. Well, yes ... but actualy, no.
There will allways be people complaining about something ... no matter what you do, and if someone gives a game bad review based on Early Access experience, it come out quite quickly ... so, personaly i would expect it would more hurt those people who would make such inacurate reviews more than game itself.
4. It may a little ... but that would be insignificant on grant scale.
I mean the hype around every next patch is a little lower with every another month of EA ... but still those are BIG events ... and they would be trivial compared to full release.
