Yes, and it is such a shame. And the article doesn't mention Sara and what her connection was with Yogg-Saron. Combine that with the mentioned stuff and this entire article depressed me. :(

And that becomes the real balancing act the whole dev team has to deal with, and at some point they have to sacrifice content for timing. Imagine what three or four more months of development would have done for Wrath. While something as massive as an AN questing zone probably couldn't have been implemented in 3-4 months, a lot of these loose ends could have been tied up, like giving Crystalsong a reason to exist.
Yet BC was rapidly winding down, despite the best efforts of 2.4, and there was only so long they could wait to release the next expansion before everyone got sick of Outland and left WoW.

We're kind of at the same junction now, with Cata on the horizon. This is another reason why I'm pretty okay with the gating of content in ICC, because pushing deadlines back and killing time by Blizz (while it sucks) means less things have to get cut, and I'd rather wait an extra couple months then have to read a similar article about Cata in 2011.

Sara was Yogg-Saron. It was just another mind game.

but the problem is she's just sort of there, no real reason behind it, just randomly standing in the room, you know somethings up from the start. I've always gotten the impression that she was supposed to be a bigger player in what would have been the azjol raid, leading you on throughout, at the moment, she's just a random fight mechanic.

I also wish they'd do something with the connection between yogg and arthas, there may be something later, but with sara transforming into a val'kyr, and the arthas vision in the fight, i'd like to see how it all linked together.

I think a the problems came from hard-modes, plus combined 10-25 raiding. Stories like the gun'drak one, would have been finished in a 10 man alternate raid if this were the BC days, and i think making 2 lots of items for every instance, plus hard mode items, plus hard mode fights, sucked up the time, as well as made it so if they did do those additional places, they would have had to have all those things done for them to.

Ran out of time is pretty accurate. You see this sort of thing in EVERY game, if you dig through the files. Sounds, models, scripts, sometimes entire areas that got cut. Why? Because quite frankly, if you continually try to add every cool idea you come up with, you'll keep pushing the game further and further back. There's a certain point where you have to lockdown what you have at the time and say "This is what we're shipping with, this is what we're going to finish, this is the game we're going to polish and perfect from here on out," and more often than not you're going to have to cut a few things to get there.

If you don't, then you wind up with something like Duke Nukem Forever, where the game continually is redesigned and has new stuff added to it (Of course, the reasons for DNF's delays and endless revamps are more complex than that, but it's the same basic thing).

running out of time doesn't explain all the awesome weapon models that got designed, but never drop anywhere, particularly when some models get reused. zones getting cut, lessened scope to instance clusters, these things happen and i can forgive. but damn, i want some of those awesome looking unused ulduar weapons. they did a mostly good job with the ICC 5's at bringing in a lot of new and different models, now just keep up the good work.

Re: Running out of time.
When Blizzard runs out of time on a project, they have enough commitment and skill to release something as good as WOTLK. When other developers run out of time, they end up with Conan and Warhammer.

12 million subscribers, all of whom are willing to pay subscription fees while waiting for 'Soon (tm)' to happen, while Blizzard continues developing 'for the good of the game'.

Honestly, there was no reason for them to ever be out of time. To me the release felt rushed, and the timing was incredibly convenient to torpedo Conan.

... things that make you say, 'wtf?!'