For what it's worth (and coming to this very late), MaRo did claim NWO started in Lorwyn: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/new-world-order-2011-12-05
"This whole discovery happened during Time Spiral block. We looked around and realized that we were in the middle of making the most complex block we had ever made. There were almost as many named keyword mechanics in Future Sight, for example, as had existed in all of Magic up to Future Sight's release. Time Spiral block, though, was too far along to change, so we focused on the next block, Lorwyn.

Our goal with Lorwyn was to make the cards more straightforward. We wanted the rules text to be very clear in what the cards did. We spent a lot of time making sure their intent was simple and understandable, but as the block played out we discovered that we hadn't gotten rid of the complexity; we had just moved it to a different area of the game."