I wrote a novel-length response, but decided it would be better to just sum up my main points. I don't mean to hate on you or anything you said, and I am not trying to tell you how to have fun, believe me.
0) I have never said, nor do I believe, that the NA version of HeroQuest is the "one" or "definitive" or "ultimate" "only" or "final" version of the game. I think it would be silly to say the same thing about the EU version, even if it was released first. I think there's room for these different versions to exist side by side today, just as they have for 3+ decades, and that won't change when the Remake comes out this fall and any future releases. It won't die until fans stop playing and creating content for it.
1) Hero Quest is not Warhammer. They are two different things. It's not Battlemasters or Dragonstrike or Dungeons and Dragons or Heroscape or Fantasy Battle either.
2) Clearly there is some inspiration from Warhammer mixed in, and not surprising consider who worked on it, but it was a collaborative effort. There's less of it in the version I grew up with.
3) It has never been officially declared that Warhammer and HeroQuest are the same. The closest statement was a line in a couple of novels (that we never read) which state it is "loosely" based on the same world.
4) The NA version and the EU version grew up side by side, they were both official, both have nostalgic, ancient fanbases who still love the product today. In NA, we didn't have the maps "tying it to the Warhammer world...loosely."
5) You're nostalgic for the version of Hero Quest you grew up with (just like I am for mine), but that doesn't mean other fans can't be nostalgic for their DIFFERENT (but equal) separate continuity Hero Quest versions.
6) This is fiction, fantasy entertainment. "Canon" is irrelevant unless you're using it as some kind of guide to ensure continuity in your series of writings. They aren't making new Hero Quest adventures anymore (well, until next year). The writers of Heroquest are YOU AND ME because that's how the game was made, it was supposed to continue however you wanted after you defeated the included quests. All fantasy fiction is loosely based on real life in some sense, but unlike reality, we can mold fantasy to our hearts content (just can't profit off of it unless we hold the right papers!).
7) Even if Stephen Baker himself, or Hasbro the current owners, or even if somehow GW got involved again and made a decision to "unify" the canon, if you, me, or any other fans didnt' like it, we would IGNORE it and go back to the "tradition" we liked, the one we grew up with.
8) Our imaginations allow us to make up whatever we want about this "world." The official stuff is vague enough and different enough that there is no need to fight about it or try to get everyone on the same side.
9) If you love Warhammer, play Warhammer. Use all your favorite Warhammer stuff in Hero Quest. Hasbro doesn't care, I don't care. Enjoy! I don't see the big deal, because that's just not the version I grew up with, and since I didn't play Warhammer (I knew plenty of people in college that did) I don't care to expend the effort to try to learn it all and make it "fit" somehow on my own.
10) We're all going to do what we want to do anyway and have fun on our own terms, no matter what Hasbro does with this IP.
I think it's great that you love GW and Warhammer. I've seen some of their character designs and some of them look absolutely awesome and if I had more money to burn and time I'd probably get some of them. Otherwise are just not to my taste at all. Not everybody shares your love of it, maybe I'm alone in that. I wouldn't assume that anyone who loves HQ must automatically love WHF as well.
So maybe something exists in WHF, or works a certain way in WHF, that doesn't impose that standard onto HQ at all. It will never even come up, unless A) you do it yourself in your own creation or B) Hasbro puts it into one of their new products (which as a fan, you don't HAVE to buy, and you can still mod it to something else!). So if you're writing a quest, it doesn't have to conform to some map, especially not one in another version of the game you never heard of until decades after you put the game into mothballs.
PS: I was 11 when you got Hero Quest, and we started playing it the year after you did. I visited the Inn around '02. No street cred battles needed here.
Peace!