Originally Posted by
Ferocity
You truly missed the fun times, though upto BC and certain degree in WotLK, rules didn't change much. Ofc there were OP classes in leveling, hunter being #1, warlock being quite more distant #2. But hunters were penalized by having to carry arrows with them and food for pet, while warlocks had to carry soul shards for many of important things, e.g, summoning demons and other players.
And yes you had to manage mana during leveling, sometimes using downranked spells, using wands (which had separate weapon slot). You could customize your build for efficiency or survivability (lol at people who keep saying "it was just about copy the best build", as you couldn't actually do things efficiently with raid-optimized builds outside raids unless you enjoyed "drinking after each mob"). Level 1-60 quests weren't stupid as in Cata+, all of them were quite coherent and quite a number of questlines lasted for many levels (e.g., missing diplomat). It's a shame that newer players will never see such things as fight with Onyxia in Stormwind, Elemental Invasions, Elemental Lieutenants, World Dragons and so on.
You had to do unusual things for many quests, e.g, you had to die to get one of most important quests for BRD as NPC could be interacted only in ghost form, and so on. There was much bigger synergy between classes, there were much more class exclusive buffs which were stacking with other similar buffs. Priest's Fortitude was stacking with Druid's paw and with Paladin's Blessing of Kings. There was Spirit buff from priests and stacking one from shamans + mana generation ability of shadow priests. And so on.
Now looking at what we have, game lost most of its depth, and 1-60 suffered the most. Newer players will never know what WoW was used to be. And it is sad.
And no, you couldn't completely ignore talents, like now, red level mobs were lethal, there were true elites in most of zones (not lol-elites like in Dread Waste or arcade elites on Timeless Isle), whom you couldn't beat just by "avoiding cheap 1-shot abilities" and who were often part of questlines. One of such elite quests was horde's favorite - it involved spawning very high level elite in Southshore (which was Alliance town) right at Alliance graveyard. Yes, questing didn't feel like some stupid filler with tons of popculture references, it was more like adventure, where you could find many interesting things and could actually die.