Because the Devs have decided to do it that way. We don’t know how and why they’re making the decisions that they are, we don’t know their processes or what is going on behind the scenes. All we have is the two places Perl and I linked to elaborate on what is locked or open on which realms.
Those decision-makers are not that great at communicating things, but unfortunately, there is no direct way to speak with the Devs, outside of tweeting @WarcraftDevs or posting to that monster thread I linked. They rarely interact directly with players outside of their Twitter - and honestly, I don’t look at Twitter for anything so I cannot even tell you how interactive they are there. What I do know is this particular forum can offer no more insight than what we’ve provided because absolutely no staff beyond our SFAs come here.
I know this is kind of the equivalent to a parental “Because I said so!” response, but with the Devs at the helm of that particular ship, that is essentially what we’re getting.