Pretty much no one was throwing a "temper tantrum" about the horse....
People threw a temper tantrum about everything in the preorders, and then ordered anyway. If you didn't see that then you weren't paying attention at all.
SWTOR went F2P because it's a half ass single player game with MMO tacked on like an afterthought, it was rushed out the door, and their customers were treated like crap. Every concern people had about the game got them banned from the forums and customer support was incompetent. If it wasn't always meant to go F2P then it was simply incompetently designed and managed.
EQ2 went F2P because people expected it to be a prettier EQ and it wasn't, and that only includes the sliver of the EQ playerbase who went to it. EQ itself was still active. You can't have a sequel MMO live while the predecessor is still successful. EQN will do much better, even though it's designed to be F2P. (edit: I have big hopes and dreams for Pantheon, but sadly, not the best faith.)
ESO is not GW2, it's not AO, and it's not DAoC. You'll find commonalities between it and other titles, sure, because every MMO borrows from the legacy of the past. WoW did. Like WoW, ESO builds on that past legacy with its own innovations and style; unlike all of those F2P games listed here.
ESO is designed to be a subscription game building on one of the most successful franchises in the electronic entertainment industry (like WoW). It has an immense following (like WoW), and a body of lore that will ensure that new content storylines can only be messed up if the developers work hard to screw the pooch (like Blizzard didn't do). In PvP only, it does have some DAoC flavor but only if people actually play it that way. They don't have to. Cyrodiil can be played like GW2, DAoC, etc, but it can also be played like ESO.
It's not a MMO flavored Elder Scrolls. It's an Elder Scrolls flavored MMO.
Ultimately, it will go F2P if it's not successful with a subscription model, and judging by the immense number of fansites, guilds, and discussion, the ungodly massive amount of content it has (seriously, there are quests everywhere -- look under that rock. Hey, a quest!), and the variety of playstyles it caters to well, it *will* succeed. The F2P hate is how haters are grasping at straws after the "WoW clone" slander written before anybody even knew anything about the (then pre-alpha) game proved silly. One could write a thesis on the dysfunctional social psychology driving the F2P claims.
"Those other MMOs that weren't WoW went F2P," doesn't mean anything. ESO is not any one of those games. If that's the best evidence that can be provided to support that prediction, then it's beyond silly at this point.