I don't know about that, it really seems like the personal side of the story was just getting out of control, I don't remember ever seeing anything that more books were needed to bring the rest of the nations in or anything.

Anyway, as far as unfinished story arcs were concerned, I can't really think of any. There were details that got dropped, probably because of Sanderson, but I don't think any of that warrants the label "story arc".

Among details that seemed to get lost by the wayside were the emergence of new preternatural abilities, like the sniffers and wolfbrothers and Min's viewings. They talked a lot in the first two books about how with the end of the Age approaching, or possibly Tarmon Gaidon, barriers were breaking down and we'd be seeing a lot more stuff like this...but no new special abilities were introduced after that book. We met one other wolfbrother in the whole series, and he showed up in the immediate next novel. No more sniffers, no other Mins, nothing.

Another tidbit was the unexplained group of sisters staying in Caemlyn at the Silver Swan inn. They made a big fuss about them, and we never heard of them again. I guess we're supposed to take away that they were simply nuetrals in the struggle and that this is what most of them were doing - grouping up in cities where important things might be going on, to wait out the results of the struggle, and keep an eye on the world in the meantime, but that seemed like a lot of build up for an 'oh, by the way, here's what background people happen to be doing, in case you were wondering,' kind of thing.

One thing that occurs to me is that it was part of the White Tower struggle that RJ committed way too much to before realizing it was out of control and dragging on too long. In large part because of the position of the Tower storyline, I was rather suprised at the announcement that book 12 was supposed to be the last one. I said before the Tower struggle was resolved that it was an absurd and pointless obsession for Egwene, because it didn't seem like it would contribute much in the grand scheme of things, if it was this late in the game. I wonder if the bits about Aes Sedai sitting on their hands waiting to see how the Tower struggle would play out was intended to add stakes to Egwene's mission, that not only was the world being deprived of the Tower & Aes Sedai's organized services, but individual Aes Sedai were paralyzed by the lack of certain leadership. Elayne notes with annoyance that they are waiting to see who will win, instead of standing up for principles, but that could also be considered indicative of the whole problem with the Tower monopoly as portrayed between the lines in the books.

What I think happened, was that before he realized how many more books he was going to write, RJ set the characters off on a meteoric rise and by the middle of the series, were at the very top in a lot of ways, and sitting pretty in the world, without much in the way of credible adversaries or threats, aside from the figurative Monster at the End of this Book Series. So he began throwing in surprises for them, mostly starting in aCoS, with Cadsuane, and the more powerful foreign channelers, like the Windfinders and Wise Ones, and having them surpass the Aes Sedai in many skills (as did some of the Kin). It makes things more plausible, that Nynaeve and Elayne did not hit the pinacle of personal power and ability at what would be the relative age of 18 months into their extended lifespans, that they had years of practice and honing their weaving skills before they could rise to the skill levels of the Wise Ones or Sumeko, or the overall competence of a Cadsuane. Cadsuane provided an adversarial role in Rand's arc, just when it seemed like his power was at its peak, and his ability to solve problems constrained only by his willingness to utilize the resources at his disposal. This stuff was necessary and good from a character point of view, but it also minimized the importance of the White Tower itself in the big picture. In his efforts to say "Wait, just one minute, don't think that becoming big cheeses among/dominating the Aes Sedai makes the Wondergirls/Rand Queens/King of the World or something!" RJ made the Tower a much less important piece of the puzzle. As was abundantly clear while Egwene was fucking around getting honey put into her tea, Rand already had more and better channelers on his team, with others as potential allies, and a large quantity of Aes Sedai bound to his service or else personally loyal to him, who could provide whatever social or political legitimacy he might need. However apocalyptically Egwene might phrase the stakes of her own campaign, the evidence visible in the rest of the story did not bear her out. It makes me think that the stuff about the sisters in Caemlyn and the other cities, or with the Borderland kings, was a belated attempt to show how the Tower issue needed to be resolved.

Another possibility for that issue being dropped was that RJ would probably have resolved it in an aside in aMoL, but simply didn't leave specific notes on it, and Sanderson either missed the cue or didn't have any reason to think of it. I wonder how many other little details were lost in Sanderson's version that would probably not have been in the notes, because they weren't important to the primary plot developments, but sort of maintained continuity. To continue with other elements from Elayne's arc, there were things like the details of her financial issues, and the bankers in Caemlyn, or her recruiting & campaigning in the countryside as she was doing on the day of the Cleansing. That last was not something that NEEDED resolution, but RJ would probably have had some mention in a scene involving the Andoran soldiers at TG or the Trolloc attack on Caemlyn, refering to how far the recruits and second-tier troops had come since Elayne gathered them up. Maybe the banking stuff would have been a minor detail in her taking the throne of Cairhien and the deals she made to abet that. It doesn't change the outcome or anything important, but it does provide a measure of continuity. I kind of think that if Sanderson had written CoT/KoD, he would have not bothered with the details about the spy Mistress Harfor had uncovered, turned and deployed to obtain the criticial intelligence of the gate attack, or else he would have given that guy a lot more attention than he needed. For all the excess of RJ's writing style, he was pretty economical. In just a handful of conversations between Mistress Harfor & Elayne, an entire mini-storyline of a barber-turned-spy plays out over three books. Now that wrapped up more or less (or maybe he'd have been there to give a piece of news during the fighting in Caemlyn, or perhaps the PoV character who first encounters Trollocs in the city, before his abrupt demise) - and that's another Sandersonian thing, to have something like that happen so off-camera - I kind of think RJ might have had someone encounter the Trollocs, and then Talmanes meet up with Aludra in the city, and mention to her that an Aes Sedai had left Mat a letter warning of the attack and he was here to save the dragons. Instead of all the scenes describing Olver reading the letter, Talmanes fighting his way in and so on - but how many other bits of continuity between the books did Sanderson drop along the way, especially his ridiculous shoe-horning in all the fans and the absurd names he gave everyone that didn't fit in with those of their country of origin?

It's stuff like that I would call "unfinished" in the series, and a lot of it, we'll never know, because we don't know what else might have come back like Almen Bunt.