I don't think anyone's necessarily surprised by it, I think we're wondering why this series is still so inflexible. Look around at other games and other companies; take note of how reactive they are to feedback on their games. Compare that to how WWE2K is handled.
They know most people (I'm including myself here) will buy them as DLC, so why get away from that model?
They do this weird thing where they like to position this in marketing as a sports sim game, but then break from that (because sports games typically don't do DLC) and add characters as DLC like fighting games. The difference being that fighting game DLC extends the life and adds new content to the base game and WWE is obviously a yearly release. With how early they lock in the disc and DLC contents, it comes across as holding back content to resell later.
I don't know why EA UFC adds fighters for free when they could charge for them, but I'm glad they do. More than fighting games, it's a model that would fit for WWE games.