Yes. I'm going to tell you exactly where it went and you will be shocked - clickbait.
Contrary to unpopular opinion, vanilla WoW world design had a certain structure to it. You had the "core zones" of your race / faction: Mulgore, Durotar, Teldrassil, Elwynn, Dun Morogh and Tirisfal. These zones had a heavy faction presence. As a new character, you were mostly fighting small-time criminals and minor monster infestations - believable problems for a "core zone".
The further out from your capital you went, the lesser the presence of your faction became. For example, the Barrens felt like a peripheral province of Durotar with a new corresponding set of Horde problems: collecting supplies for your settlements, fighting fringe cults and defending your settlements from indigenous locals. All believable problems for a peripheral province of a newly-established faction. The Alliance, on the other hand, were fighting corrupt administrators in Westfall and Duskwood - also believable problems for a well-established kingdom.
Now when you went out even further from the core and the periphery, that's where things got interesting. You journeyed into "wilderness" zones that had a drastically reduced faction presence. Along with this reduced presence, you had much less straightforward quests pointing you do to X in spot Y and collect Z. You'd have to figure out more on your own while traveling through the wilds - where to farm, which professions to level etc. You also encountered neutral towns like Booty Bay and Gadgetzan, where members of both factions would cooperate to survive in the wilds.
As you went further out, you stumbled into even more desolated zones. You would have places like the Un'goro Crater and the Western Plaguelands which had barely next to no friendly presence - faction, neutral or otherwise. This is where you'd start to run into some really wild things like titanic Dinosaurs eating your face. Correspondingly, you'd also find much greater treasures and valuable materials.
Lastly, you ventured into openly hostile zones like Silithus and the Eastern Plaguelands. These were the zones where you felt like you were actively in danger and they had the visuals to match their hostile and terrifying ambience.
This progression from civilization into wilderness into terrifying enemy strongholds is completely absent in post-vanilla expansion. All Shadowlands zones, for example, feel equally lived-in and you are carefully curated into every nook and cranny with little possibilities for independent exploration. In fact, I think the last time we had an "outer wilds" zone with few quests and little friendly presence was Townslong Steppes in MoP and Sholazar Basin in WotLK. Perhaps people said that MoP reignited vanilla's sense of exploration exactly because it tried to recreate that core -> periphery -> outer wilds -> enemy stronghold journey with the Jade Forest -> Valley of the Four Winds -> Kun-lai and Townslong -> Dread Wastes progression?