well, to be fair, before alpha 16 released, the dev team was like...what, 6 people? if that?
Joel just hired on a bunch of new people, who have been explosive with what they're bringing to the table, including alot of things that were almost too menial to deal with as a small dev team, like how the landscape is formed, and how POIs interact with said landscape.
So hopefully it isn't too far reaching for these ideas to come to fruition, and hopefully its not putting the cart before the horse to aim so high for this next update, but that is just the type of gamble each and every update has. "Do we release something for this update that is basic steps, or do we shoot higher, and try to have an expansive, encompassing update that will drive more and more players to the game?"