It wasnt. Classic will have normal loot.
Old shadowform with Anathema was more recognisable and when I saw the first Atiesh in game in vanilla I was disappointed.
Not sure why anyone would commit so much time and guild politics into something with so little powerlevel and visual impact in the game.
-
This does not seem to be the case from my experience. What they did was enable loot trading within a brief window in raids in order to cut down on GM requests to handle mislooted items/ninja looting/loot drama. I don't recall offhand if they stuck to it or not, but that's different from the Personal Loot system. Classic runs on the classic loot systems; if memory serves it defaults to Need before Greed.
- - - Updated - - -
It's a major lore item that stretches all the way back to Warcraft 1. That's quite a powerful draw in and of itself; even the famous Corrupted Ashbringer, despite a major lore presence, had its lore designed for WoW.
edit: Addendum: Atiesh's visual 'pop' wasn't from the staff itself, but from the swirling ravens visual effect and the Karazhan portal.
Be seeing you guys on Bloodsail Buccaneers NA!