How did they not know that all these issues were going to happen?

With the newest AMD Rage Performance Driver, the texture lag is much better, but is by no means fixed. Like others, it also introduced tearing, and crashing while zoning. That, combined with creating the texture cache directory and increasing the size, the game looks decent. It still loads some pretty bad looking textures, but they're not as bad. It's a start. Let's hope the rumored upcoming patch gives us a real fix.