Having extra content planned seems to have been Mcquaid&Co's modus operandi. They did the same thing with Vanguard, planned out quite a bit more landmasses than they actually launched with. Just the latter game failed commercially so none of the extra stuff was ever built for it.
Working on some stuff prior to launch doesn't preclude the possibility that said work was chucked in the trashcan when work on the expansion started in earnest. We could see some of that with Warcraft (a different studio, obviously, but same industry) since some of the un-used assets for original hellfire penninsula and zangarmarsh did actually make it into the release installation, albeit never used in-game. I would have liked to see "original Kunark." One of my complaints with the Kunark we got was it deviated too much from the style of the pre-expansion game.
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