Ash Mantle
Adventurer
But that is, as you said, advancement of lore because pf consecuences of certain metaplots.
Yes, the Time of Troubles changed the Realms because some gods died. Logical consecuences of the novels. But, they not changed the Realms into a high-technology setting made by inteligent dinosaurs.
Yeah, quite wild but that is how it feels the changes they did to the Raven Queen in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. And the Nentir Vale setting Mearl's game.
That's still by any definition changing of the lore. Sometimes the changing of lore actually makes the edition change possible and made a way to explain the changing of mechanics from one edition into the next, ie Die, Vecna, Die was the in-game and in-lore explanation for the mechanical change from 2nd into 3rd edition. There was some massive lore changes for several settings as a consequence.
2nd edition Realms was actually on the way to progression of smokepowder being disseminated throughout the Realms, but iirc 3rd edition Realms changed that again.
As another example, we saw the rise of Shar's Shadow Weave in 3rd edition, and we also had 3e mechanics that represented what it meant to be a Shadow Weave practitioner. There was nothing like that in the 2e Realms.