So... I hated the beta... well maybe hate is to strong, I just found it a little bland and really buggy. However I bought the game on sale last week and to be fair, I'm quite enjoying it at the moment. Many of the bugs have been fixed and as long as you take it for what it is, an MMO, there is fun to be had. Personally I'd have preferred multiplayer Skyrim using something like the Minecraft business/server model, but as MMOs go, its really quite good now.
As for FTP, I don't know. My bet would be Buy-To-Play. It always should have been BTP. Guild Wars seems to be doing well as BTP and Subscriptions just don't fly with most gamers nowadays, especially console peasants. It makes sense for the old boxes to be removed from the shelves even if they are still going to sell boxes, the old boxes would have warnings about subscriptions on them. My speculation would be they are going to continue to sell digital boxes, release the console version and go BTP at the same time.