Although I absolutely agree that the current temperature scheme is a bit off-kilter, the main problem with making the temperatures less aggressive is that encumbrance is a pretty important balancing mechanism, and it keeps you from just layering armor and running around with it. If you didn’t need to wear much clothing to get by, you could wear the best armor with the least amount of encumbrance and not really have to worry about much.
One possibility would be to rebalance the temperature effects to something more realistic, but start the game in late autumn. That would give players some time to gather clothing but it would get progressively colder and clothing would become about as important as it is now (and more important as time goes on). If you can survive the winter then cheers, you get to enjoy warm weather and less encumbrance. Summer is the season for raiding.
As a side note, Alcohol doesn’t raise your temperature, it just makes you feel less cold. Ie, you aren’t actually less cold. Frostbite will occur at the same temperature, and I believe I’ve read that hypothermia actually occurs at a higher temperature in correlation to blood alcohol levels. What you could do with alcohol is have it decrease cold and wet mood modifiers and make it easier to sleep while cold. But any physical effects of cold like frostbite or hypothermia (should totally be a thing in Cataclysm) should definitely remain.
