Using IE 8 on my work computer and it is also missing the WYSYWG editor. With IE 9 and Chrome, the editor is there, along with all the smileys (including the "cry" smiley) and it's not correctable by using compatibility mode either. As I recall, IE 8 had, by far, the most compatibility issues across the board, particularly from all the issues reported on the support forum of SMF.

The bbc for the cry icon in the admin panel doesn't have any slashes in it at all. It's: colon apostrophe left parenthesis as it should be and it appears as it should in IE 9 and Google Chrome.
And, I don't know how that would affect the entire WYSYWG not appearing in only IE8. If anything, it should only show a java error: little, red X in the place of the image and, if it were an error, it would show the same in all browsers, which it doesn't.
EDIT: I just did my own test and, as suspected, the issue of the WYSIWYG not appearing is relevant to the replacement shoutbox. Somehow, this may also include the "cry" smiley issue. It's updated for IE9 but not IE8 and using the compatibility mode doesn't correct the issue. I knew the transition just went too smoothly...
The shoutbox is a very good one and it's getting more use than what was there previously. It's nice because you can use it while browsing the forum as compared to the stand-alone ones we had used previously ("Cheers" and "The Saloon"). I'll see if I can fix it but, if not, I guess the only true fix is for members to update their browser versions.
It's always something, isn't it? - LOL!