I dont know that the morphs pack needed to be free.. v4's never was unless you were a pirate.  However I will agree that it did hurt their success somehwat by not having it available earlier on.  I do believe expressions/morphs are coming quite soon, though it is a little late as far as the 'strike while the iron is hot' axiom goes.  

There are a lot of issues involved in this I'm sure.  There is a certain need to get things rolling early on and get some income rolling in to 'keep the lights on' so to speak.  There is also the need to get wider feedback on the figure before building the next step.  A lot of things that might be shortcomings of the base figure can be addressed as part of the morphs pack, but if they both roll out at the same time there is opportunity lost in making those corrections or addressinmg those issues.

Did they release her a bit too soon.. possibly..

Maybe an 'open beta' period would have been appropriate to allow the possibility of more change to satisfy concerns... but then...  who is going to bother making content for a 'beta' figure.  At least with a released figure the content creator can build with the confidence that their work will stand up and they wont need to re-do it.

I've been playing with the figure a lot, and doing some testing and what not.  I'm quite satisfied with her for the most part.  Her eye geometry is a bit weird but there have been morphs to adress that.  Her base texture isn't mind blowing, and has some issues, but its a serious step up from v4!  Her bends are generally pretty good, though the thigh/butt area doesn't bend as nicely AntoniaWM, Miki 4 or roxie (though the inner thigh doesnt collapse slightly the way miki4s does).  The broad shoulders can be adjusted with simple scaling so they dont bother me much, though I can see how they irritate some folk who like their figures daintier.  

To say she isn't making an impact just isn't true.  She has already broader support than any of the other third party WM figures has garnered.  Michelle managed a pretty decent hit of support, but largely limited to RDNA.  Antonia still has her niche support but never gathered the kind of support Dawn had right off the bat.  She has definitely changed things.. its just still to be determined by how much