World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion was… divisive. In the case of the Barrens, it was literally divisive—cleaving the once-beloved levelling zone in two. A landslide of other changes to old world content meant that, while The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King were pretty well-received, Cataclysm is the red-headed stepchild of Warcraft's earlier history—and that's to say nothing of its endgame content and patch cycle.
But, according to an interview by PCGamesN with executive producer Holly Longdale, the prospect of going back to Cataclysm isn't as unpopular as you might think. "Much like many players, [we] were like ‘Oh, God, are they gonna do Cataclysm?’ And we were like ‘why don’t we just ask?' … Then we got the survey data back, and it wasn't bad."
