At BlizzCon 2010 last weekend, Chris Metzen, lead designer for World of Warcraft, had some interesting things to say about the state of the world that we knew and loved throughout both Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King content. While these are great areas of the game, the problem now is that, with the revamped old-world Azeroth, there is a lore gap between level 60 and level 80 where, for all intents and purposes, you go back in time. All this new stuff is happening from new character creation to level 60, then all the sudden you're going back in time to Outland to fight off Illidan's forces, then continuing on into Northrend to drive back the undead and defeat a bad guy who has already been "defeated". Finally, you come back to Azeroth and seemingly pick up at level 80 where you left off at level 60.
This apparently doesn't mesh with the Blizzard lore guys any more than it does with fans, but it is something we will have to live with for now. However, Mr. Metzen pointed out that they do intend to go back and fix things. Eventually, things in both Outland and Northrend will be updated to flow smoothly with the new Cataclysm story, and the events that are happening back in the main of Azeroth. They simply ran out of time, because of the massive amount of content that is already in the area those two expansions cover - along with the fact that there are at least 3500 redone quests in Cataclysm.
I personally can't wait for this. Will quests be redone or will just NPC dialog be updated? Will things be adjusted slightly because of the demise of Illidan and Arthas? Only time will tell...