Uh, isn't Explorer still pinned to the taskbar by default? So you can still get to it directly when you're on the desktop, which for folks like mr. wastingtime and Mr. Death is probably most of the time. And if you want to pin it to Start as well that's easy to do. Or you can use Win-E, Win-1 (if it's at its default place on the taskbar), or it's also in the Quick Access Menu (right-click in lower-left corner) or you can pin individual folders (from their context menus as cbae pointed out) to Start, or use desktop shortcuts, or probably a bunch of other ways I've forgotten. So this is a silly thing to complain about.
Here's an actual legitimate complaint: why is there STILL no "open file location" appbar command (or any appbar commands for that matter) in the Files search result page on the Start screen? And STILL no multiselect on the Apps screen to pin multiple apps at once ... grrrrrrrr. I wish there were a way to move multiple tiles at once on the Start screen tile view itself (e.g. with rectangle select) as well.
