I find it interesting that everyone seems to feel that Thrall's role in Cata was overdone (and there are some fair arguments for it), but that his place wasn't all that different than Tirion Fordring in Wrath, and yet I don't recall seeing such a backlash. There's actually quite a few similarities. He's a neutral hero with a long history fighting against everyone's common enemy, he's wicked powerful and wields a legendary weapon, more than half of questing in Icecrown revolved around him, he had a whole faction associated with him, and he was really the star good-guy of 3.2 and 3.3. IMO, all the complaints about Thrall could easily have been levied at Tirion Fordring not a year and a half ago.

My point is, from Blizzard's perspective everyone seemed to like putting an Alliance character into the neutral spotlight to be the grand opposition to the bad guy, and attempted to do something similar with Thrall. I guess I just don't understand why TF's near-ridiculous exposure in Wrath was all that different from Thrall in Cata. Malfurion received a similar treatment.

As for Tyrande, I agree that she needs more love, though I have to say I can't stand her new voice. I don't ever recall complaining about voice acting before in WoW (or any video game, I wiped for months on Sindy and it never bothered me), but the voice and the character just don't seem to align for me.