As for 2, I'm not even sure what you mean? Screwing over half the classes? You mean the mages being hurt by TOAU? I don't see how that's relevant. It had nothing to do with the level cap being raised or not. Classes are constantly changing and being tweaked trying to strike the right balance, no matter the game. That's more poor design decisions in designing TOAU. Abyssea has done the same, classes that were irrelevant before, like MNK, are now incredibly popular. Things change. It's the same in WoW or any other MMO.
I just want to touch on this before I go to bed, I'll probably respond in full tonight. WoW doesn't eliminate the usefulness of certain classes. SMNs mainhealed quite often long before astralburns, and astralburns used to actually mean SMNs going to KRT to fight bones or going to sky for pots. RDMs had it the easiest out of the colored mages (besides BLU) to get into lolcolibri parties, but it was still shafted somewhat, unless there were no bards around. My WHM was at cap long before ToAU, and I only leveled with friends when I needed to recap come ToAU because everyone was TP burning and wanted a healer who could refresh/ballad themselves.

I agree with a few points you made though, so I should respond tonight when I get up.