Definitely not the same. The big thing in current WoW that's so much worse than vanilla is that the World doesn't seem very big at all. No one is ever forced to go out and explore the World...of warcraft. Game should be called "Current Tiny Continent....of Warcraft"
better, because now each class has 3 specs, whereas before several classes only had 1 spec and a few more only had 1 spec choice allowed if they wanted to pvp/pve.
- ret paladins used to melee hit and judge, and they had to cast hammer to execute their target... if it crit'd.
- hunters had a melee spec with melee attacks.
- threat generation = "wait till 3 sunders are applied, then keep a close eye on your threat meter so you don't die"
...oh I could go on all night about vanilla.
Still great game to play
Vanilla was awesome, Burning Crusade just as awesome, WOTLK kinda meh because most of the content was fucking easy, Cata sucked balls, MoP kinda sucks balls with all the dailies. I feel bad for people who never got to experience Tarren Mill and X-roads horde/alliance clusterfucks, who never got to see hordes invade Redridge only to get their ass kicked by Alliance 5 minutes after, I feel bad that they have to run around in empty zones thinking that it was always like that. I'm glad I got to experience that.
Also LFR is complete fucking bullshit, Blizzard needs to stop with the idea that everyone deserves to see everything even if they only play fucking pokémon battles and fish, trying to make this game applicable to every human soul out there, they should not pamper to EVERYONE because it is impossible to please everyone and it only makes the game worse for people who were around at the beginning.
Yes, it's impossible to please everyone, and I think they should just do stuff to please me. And I propose: they should change how raid access works. The number of attempts on a raid boss should be determined by how many pet battles you did within a lockout period. And for every full stack of fish, you're allowed to roll on one item.
Oh, and this applies to the normal and heroic modes only (double requirements for heroic of course). LFR you can just jump in directly.