Spoilers: (Highlight to reveal)
You are completely wrong. When Ed first revealed this would be a retold of past MK events in order to prevent Armageddon I prepared myself for changes.

In my opinion Smoke being now human and sub zero Cyborg was a reasonable change.

But I would never expect them to kill characters in order to doing so! I was expecting major twists! Not deaths!!!

What they should/could have done:

Raiden thinking Kung Lao is the one who have the potential to defeat Shao Kahn (since he is the reincarnation of the Great Kung Lao) send him to Bo Rai Cho after failing in kill Goro to help him improve his fighting technique so he can be prepared when Earthrealm is threatened again thus learning the whirlwind assault earlier. This would make him absent of the second tournament since he would be training and would be Liu Kang again to defeat the major opponent(s).
When the time for the evasion to earthrealm occurs and Shao Kahn is about to being defeated by Liu Kang Shang Tsung being a sorcerer somehow intercepted Raiden messages from the future as well and morphed into reptile turning invisible and damaging Liu Kang badly so Shao Kahn can deliver the last strike.
Raiden watch this and teleport Kung Lao to the scene, by having learned the whirlwind assault earlier he is able to defeat both Shang Tsung and Shao Kahn. Raiden then find it worthy to grant Kung Lao the title of Mortal Kombat Champion that Liu Kang agree to succeed.
This would make the deadly alliance to fail their goal since now would be Kung Lao the one to be attempted to be killed but since Liu Kang would also be in the Wu Shi academy this time around training since he was surpassed he would aid his friend thus ruining the deadly alliance goal. They would not attempt to kill Shao Kahn since it would not matter since the earthrealm warrior still lived.
With Deadly alliance failing Shang Tsung turned against Quan Chi reclaiming the Dragon king army just for himself. Following separate ways led Shang Tsung to seek the aid of another ally, Reptile to slain warriors so he could use their souls to resurrect the Dragon King army. Sending reptile to the earthrealm to slain those mighty warriors would make that he would never crossed paths with Nitara and so he would not go into the Dragon egg chamber so Onaga could not return since he didn’t have a body to host which would make Blaze still a watcher of the egg and not resuming his mission, by this Armageddon would not happen!

Spoilers: (Highlight to reveal)
It's probably a little less awesome if you're a fan of a character that's killed.

No one ever really dies in fighting games though. They can always come back, even if it's through a non-canon unlockable.

People have always died in Mortal Kombat! They've just been resurrected countless times.

Again, it's called Mortal Kombat man. Of course people are going to die!

Haha, I think that's a better point to be honest. But, yeah, it's always been frustrating that in a tournament about death, in a game full of "fatalities;" no one actually seems to die.