So right now, when someone is trying to level in Blasted Lands, by default they are sent to the WoD version, which is fine for people who have played a decent amount of time however new players probably won’t know what is going on and to talk to Ziodormi, that is fine, just add it in to the Warchief’s Command quest for the zone and the Alliance equivalent.
But in addition, any method of leaving the zone at all (Except logging out) causes you to go back to the WoD version, which means you need to run back to Ziodormi to get back every time you get a dungeon que, very annoying but I guess just don’t do dungeons.
But the Horde version has a quest as part of the zone’s main story called “Some People Just Need Killing” which has you go deep into a long mine that goes into Swamp of Sorrows and curves back into Blasted Lands, since that means I’ve left the zone, I get booted to the WoD version of the phase whenever I try to get to the quest objective rendering the entire zone impossible to level in.
Please make the Cata version of the zone the default phase or force a swap whenever people leave the zone. People who need the WoD phase don’t have to worry about the zoning issue, the Cata version is the one most people who are in the zone use.
That does seem like an oversight. Chromie Time should be sending you to the correct version of places like Blasted Lands, Dustwallow Marsh, etc. based on expansion.
On the SL beta, I saw this issue in Darkshore. I would port from Stormwind to Darkshore and it would be the end-game version of Darkshore. Everything was be level 50 and one shot my level 10 character that had received a quest to go there. This persisted when the pre-patch began on the PTR so I reported it as a bug again. If a character started in Teldrassil, Darkshore would be in the correct phase, but there would be no flight path available for Lor’Danel, even if you used the flight path toy. These issues weren’t fixed until about two weeks from the pre-patch going live.
I just began questing in Blasted Lands too and yeah, it’s annoying. I’m on Alliance though so I haven’t needed to go back to Swamp of Sorrows. I have however queued for dungeons and battlegrounds and every time I have to talk to Ziodormi after returning to the zone. I almost died the first time as I loaded back after a dungeon into (what should’ve been a very safe) Nethergarde Keep only to be attacked by a bunch of Iron Horde orcs.
Sounds like the theramore bug where EVEN IF YOU SELECT PRE-CATA THERAMORE, THE ZONE WILL AUTOMATICALLY REVERT ITSELF IF YOU LEAVE THE ZONE AND COME BACK AND THIS IS ANNOYING AF!!! 
Thank you. This happened to me while farming Tricky Treats. I went to an inn and what the hell, it’s totally covered in hostile orcs, even though the addon showed it as an available inn.
Such a dumb bug lol
(I’d also like the cata version of Stormwind to be around, without Lion’s rest and that new embassy. Like I wanna do that quest with Anduin and find all the cultists and see deathwing’s destruction…y’know?)
This is still bugged! I raised a ticket about this and got a response that wasn’t helpful at all - they told me to reload UI and logout/login. Nothing’s working for me now and there are permanently no NPCs at all.
Still an issue in mid '22.