You realize preferring "hard modes" over "heroics" is ridiculous in terms of RP. YOu want to know how you activated those "hard modes"? They were as artificial as setting the difficulty to heroic:
0. Flame Leviathan: Don't kill any of the towers on the way to him.
1. XT - Kill the heart which comes out instead of not killing it. Easier than normal mode because you didn't need to do any add management.
2. IC: Kill them in a different order.
3. Kologarn: God, I can't even remember...don't kill the arms? Did he even have a hard mode?
4. Hodir: Kill him quicker.
5. Thorim: kill the corridor quicker, which was a non-issue since the corridor people were sitting there for 30s anyways to prevent hard mode from triggering in normals.
6. Freya: Don't kill the trash.
7. Mimiron: Push the big button. I mean, really?
8. Vezax: don't kill the adds and let it coalesce
9. Yogg: Don't use any of the keeper's help.
The good/innovative thing about hard modes was not how you activated them (because those were all trivial), but that they added new phases and dynamics to fights to make them tougher. Which is what heroics do, but with removing the ridiculously contrived activation mechanic and making it a UI toggle.
Sometimes I think people who have all this nostalgia never really completed these raids. Karazhan had more trash than ToT, and more trash which was a pain in the ass. So did BT. Having done Yogg0 and Observer while current, I can tell you that ToT ranks right up there with Ulduar, thematically, design-wise, and far outranks it mechanically. And yes, I have completed ToT (normal, obvi). It might get even better with heroics, obviously haven't finished those yet.