The community... And.. uhm... Tarren Mill Vs. Southshore *nods*
...and to be honest, the early Barrens Chat.
FOMO: "Fear Of Missing Out", also commonly known as people with a mental issue of managing time and activities, many expecting others to fit into their schedule so they don't miss out on things to come. If FOMO becomes a problem for you, do seek help, it can be a very unhealthy lifestyle..
40 man raids mostly , but also miss the whole pvp setup with certain ranks and whatnot seeing a geared raider meant something , and seeing a GM in a battleground shows he worked for it.
In a sense wow has mirrored our government .
After the depression it was about hard work and people where proud of what they had.
After the job crash in the eighties it was about adjusting but people hung in there
And into days worlds it's us wondering where those days of hard work and being proud of having very little but knowing it was earned .
See if my view is far off but I think I hit it on he head
Content being unexplored
epic quests, like the onyxia preq or some random drop quest like the quest you got from the little uff gnome/drake in ubrs right after you killed the dragon that actually dropped the item you need for the quest
i was one of the lucky bastards who won the epic scale without knowing what´s it for and getting the quest right after *g*
that epics have been epics and not trash that everybody had. and i still miss the dungeon progressing, where u had to do the other raids before.
right now wow is too casual
I might prop for something like this:
TBC > Vanilla > WOTLK > CATA > MOP
And that's without playing CATA/MOP and I'm still 99% confident about that ranking.
Also community, which was taken out with all the 'anti-grind' elements that make working together trivial.
It was new and the community meant more (eg: not as many fuck wits compared to today) that's about the only thing I miss.
HOOKED ON DIABLOL, GOOD TIMES ARE BEING HAD
I miss the sense of pride I had walking though SW in my Marshal PVP gear on my Hunter, miss my rare cat pet that had attack speeds that were so fast it made it difficult for casters to get casts off they, I miss my wind serpent that I could only get from ZG that had a powerful ranged lightning strike and the ability to keep next to me so it only ranged attacked.
I miss the epic battles in AV that would go on for hours, I miss raiding in ZG, (next to Kara my favorite raid).
I also miss the class balance, when those with more self heals, damage mitigation and escape mechanisms did less DPS than those with less or no self heals, less damage mitigation and escape mechanisms, there is not even a semblance of that today.
I miss when certain skills actually did what they were supposed to do, like the Hunter's flare actually revealing a stealthie before they were on top of you or Hunters mark staying on a target for the full duration.
I miss absolutely nothing about classic WoW
I honestly miss very little about Vanilla compared to how it is today, but if I had to pick something:
World pvp being alive, as in pre dishonorable kills patch. Also, no real PvE/PvP gear split. I used to love pvping in my offtime but now between every encounter being sanitized and instanced, and a gear split meaning I have to chase more carrots to even bother, it's just not worth it.
The community, obviously. Other than that, the much lower pace and more casual friendly content. I miss having things to do that was made for casuals, and not just dumbed down hardcore content.
I agree with alot of people who have talked about working for what they needed / wanted. When t1/ t2 came out not many people on my servers ever got it early on. Would walk around Ironforge and barely any other pallys would have judgement set on, or druid t2 stormrage. And the same for PVP GM gear or close to , showed people worked for gear because i myself did the grind many times and came close, but not to GM.
Raiding and PVP alike were more fun, no biased comment there. Intros to raids like AQ were fun to participate in, along with the other many weird world events we encountered rather then just blizzard basically saying
"Here ya go, more content to crush in 2 days while we spent the next half year making the next"
And as a recent previous poster stated. The community was nicer, Alot of people know they can abuse profanity filter now and dont think at all before they talk and are in general super rude now, especially in trade chat. Bad mouthing on my server back in Vanilla usually got your but flammed off the server and kicked from every guild.
I miss the Ivory Raptor mount. Everything else about classic can stay in the depths of hell.
Edit: I also miss the old Zul'Gurub. The new one is a thousand times better, but that God-forsaken Zulian Tiger never dropped, and I'm still butthurt about that.