Hence I could not say you were truly "wrong" about anything, despite strongly disagreeing on multiple significant points.

All true; I never said Jordan was such an obsessive and disciplined linguaphile that he INVENTED whole languages as a CHILD for FUN. I merely noted that even the Professor himself provided an simple plausible explanation for expressing a lingua franca expressed in English DESPITE the fact NONE of that worlds MANY languages were ACTUALLY English. One at least as plausible for a world with only a SINGLE speaking species (or 1½ if we count the few isolated and insular Ogier) that is geographically and culturally contiguous. Maybe the Seanchan and/or Seanchan could be expected to speak a distinct language incomprehensible to Westlands natives, but even they ultimately derived from the same ancestral and cultural stock. Their distinct languages would more likely be analogous to the distinct Indo-European languages than say, English vs. Martian or Quenya. Let me put it this way:

How many OTHER fantasy series do the EXACT SAME THING? The Wiki for ASoIaF quotes Jordans friend Martin himself thus:

If that sounds a lot like what Jordan did with the Old Tongue, that is only because IT IS. Frankly, I think your far more justified criticism is of the Old Tongues existing wholly separate from Randlands modern language—despite all speakers of the latter descending from speakers of the former, to the point they lament the very thing that makes such a development unlikely: Their inability to read what their distant ancestors wrote. To illustrate just HOW unlikely such a phenomenon is, I did a quick and dirty Wikipedia search: Of 7472(!) known REAL languages, nearly 80% belong to one of just 14-15 root families. That is counting all the languages that developed and persisted in virtually total geographic isolation until the modern era, languages that only nominally exist at all (e.g. the Wikipedia states 42 Utian languages are spoken by 35 people, so either many of those three dozen people speak many languages, or many Ute languages are extinct) and languages long believed distinct that have since been proven or suspected to be linked (the Penutian root language believed to include the Utes is one such example.)

You are disappointed a mere 19 fictional nations, culturally and ancestrally linked, speak a single language when 200 frequently disparate actual nations barely speak a dozen? That is nitpicking, no more objective than condemning channeling itself as implausible. This is a FICTIONAL work of FANTASY; within that context, possibility is sufficient for plausibility. People sharing a common genetic, cultural and LINGUISTIC origin speaking the same language certainly qualifies (though, again, the notion they would all inexplicably develop a wholly NEW language than that they all ALREADY spoke is admittedly more dubious.)

Wonder at will, but tell me how commonly otherwise laudable Greek heroes meet tragic catastrophic ends because they fail to develop in some critical way?

The changes I referenced were all psychological, emotional and/or intellectual, not merely physical nor chronological. You made a false equivalence.

I agree there was probably some element of milking, though I personally believe it was more ego than greed. However, that is not the SOLE reason the production of a DYING MAN slowed in his final days, and suggesting it was is far more "insulting" than anything I have ever said about Professor Tolkien. Further, TWoT needed a reference source if only to remove the sprawling narratives unreliable narrators (which, regrettably, the work in question deliberately refused to do.) It has a number of significant background details that would be difficult to insert into the narrative itself without a hamfisted exposition dump. The AoL and contemporary events are one thing, but how would a detailed account of Hawkwings rise and series of conquests come up in casual conversation?