Ok, the Nostalrius news brought the current quality of vanilla private servers to my attention, and I've been playing on a popular private server for a few weeks now. I think anyone poopoo'ing this idea needs to try it before they comment... Sure, there are some quality of life improvements in the game that I miss from live, but when I really think about it - most of them have contributed to the issues I have with the live servers. Quest mobs respawning almost instantly after being killed keeps you from having to group up with others in the area, for example.
I'm loving the whole vanilla experience. Real talent trees, quests that take you all over a zone, 10 minute graveyard runs when you die (encourages you to think before you pull), etc. It's going to take me several months to hit 60 at the rate I'm going (I'm actually playing more than one class so that I can play with different sets of friends who play at different times). Then I would actually consider joining a raiding guild since I never got to see any vanilla raids back in the day.
Yes, eventually I will run out of content that I'm interested in seeing. I'm a long, long ways from that right now (you forget just how big the original vanilla experience was sometimes). If Blizzard created real vanilla servers, I would pay just to play there for a long time. And if they also provided progression servers so that my toon could someday move on to BC content - I'd do that as well. (I don't know how far I'd take it though - probably not past WotLK) I know from the massive numbers of people I've seen online on the private server that I'm not alone. Is it enough to make it worth Blizzard's time? I really don't know, but I really REALLY wish they'd give it a try instead of telling me that I think I want it, but I don't...