But Vanilla was fun. Challenging and fun. The new stuff can just be nerfed anyways with addons - this makes the Retail encounters more annoying than anything else. Vanilla was just you and whatever you brought to the table (mostly .. some addons did help with timing and such)
Also managing 40 people was part of the game. If you were not a leader, a raid officer, or a class leader, then you may feel the game was easy because other people did the research for you, and simply told you what to do.
I agree though that server community was a tremendous loss. I loved spotting players of opposite faction who did me wrong in the past, and stomping them. Nowadays I'd never find anyone I ever saw before