I know this may be a bit off, and that most probably the answer is “no!”, however…
For quite a while, there was a thing i am curious about in a Cataclysm story - and that is not about lore itself or idk, but rather… the idea behind it. Orrrr, was it just to go with the tale and be nothing special by itself?..
Do you think there is a way to pm said author and take a few mins of his time? :р
I don’t know if you can contact the devs, but this is my favorite dev interview right before Cataclysm from 2010 with Chris Metzen and Alex Afrasiabi (who still plays a big role in the 2018 Blizzcon Q&A). All Blizzcon dev interviews are interesting but this one stands out for me.
It might give you some insight what the devs thought about Cata. I especially like it because they even talk about plans for Turalyon & Alleria, a Windrunner sisters reunion (9:57), Warfront Stromgarde and reveal N’zoth, They were asked about Kul’tiras (7:30) and that Garrosh (17:28) might become warchief. Illidan redemption storyline that we got in Legion (30:30). Almost every question is like “yea we got that by now, that really happened”. I’m still trying to find clues about Shadowlands but couldn’t find any so far ^^ (Edit: Maybe that he adds to the Illidan question that Arthas will get no redemption story but has to pay. Edit 2: Oh well the next question is about Old Gods and what happens when they are all dead 33:16)
24:39 first appearance on red tshirt guy of course who owned the devs with specific lore question (also in the next years till 2017).
And right after that probably the question you ask yourself here if I understand you correctly (25:40). It shows that they had lore issues with all the changes so i think they were purely made to let players fly in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdom. The players didn’t like it much and they didn’t do more of those changes but also never went back to fix it. Today they don’t change whole zones forever but have different versions of the maps (like in Uldum: old Uldum & 8.3 Uldum). They really destroyed the whole old world with Cataclysm and I think they regret it too. I guess that’s why people were so excited about Classic WoW.