I'm from Australia so I don't get my WIi U until the 30th. Regarding the Update, do I need to install it just to play games offline? I have lousy date quota at the moment(less than the update) so I won't be able to update for a month or so, and it would be nice to at least play games offline during that time ^_^

No, you can play everything on the wii U without the update EXCEPT for wii games.

That is extremely good news for me, Thanks!

Your quota is less than like 1 GB or whatever people are saying it is now? Ouch.
Could be worth taking it to a friend's house to update it or something like that if you can so then you can get all the features up and running.
But yeah, at the end of the day you can still play Wii U retail games so I guess that's the most important thing.