Launcher missing?

I just installed the Beta. Initially i hit "play" when the progress bar was at 50%, screen went blank and i got the "waiting" cursor icon. I waited a minute or 2 before manually shutting down the program. I should mention i also turned on the option to continue downloading while the game was being played.

Now when I double click the short cut on my desktop for the launcher, the launcher no longer appears, it just loads the game directly. I doubled checked my short cut and it is going directly to the launcher executable.

Im not sure if it's missing or if the game is like this when its fully downloaded. I was expecting it to be like WoW with a launcher, where I would have to press "play" every time to start playing.