I dont know if youre playing bc, but theres tons of choices. Kebab, deathwish, ramage builds for warriors, dream state boomkins, sanc prot pallys to name a few. Hell of a lot more variety than there is in retail.I disagree, they were also less flexible because of the actual "tree" system where everything had prerequisites to something else, and you often didn't have the points you needed to build in certain directions while still picking up particular mandatory ones. Them not being free or swappable on the fly was also a factor, but the general design of them usually left most people with only a few "you can take X or Y" options for specific talents only and not much genuine choice.
I mean, I do on some of my characters, that's why I mentioned it as something positive that I like about the current system. The trees now are pretty inbalanced in this respect and there are some specs I literally never touch (and some talents on other specs), but then I have other ones where I swap regularly between content type or even fight types within specific content like raids.
At least now there are multiple "cookie cutters" depending on circumstances, though, so it's still something people interface with. And there are also still plenty of non-throughput tiers for many specs where you can entirely choose based on preference. There are also options to choose between passives and active abilities which is nice on alts where one might find the minor dps loss of the passive actually better in practice where you're not playing as optimally because it's an alt. There's more interaction, and I think the choice you do make there is more meaningful.
I absolutely did love, and do miss, the feeling of the old talent system where you had something to look forward to every other level while leveling. It definitely made leveling feel more meaningful and it was exciting to be able to increase your power incrementally on a regular basis. That said, I think that's less important in the hyperfast leveling of today (which as someone who hates leveling after a zillion years and a zillion alts of doing it, I wouldn't want to give up).
My biggest complaint with the current talents really reflects that though; I would like the current style system with the unlinked rows but with more tiers.
But this is all super subjective. I'm not here to convince anyone they should love current talents more than the old system, I'm just stating out I feel about it: I personally like the current system better than the old one (with some caveats), and I'm apprehensive about the things the new system might change when it comes, although I'm happy it is an alternative to another stupid temporary borrowed power system.
I do think everyone should be wary about some baseline abilities for some classes/specs becoming talents and having to give up points to talent into core abilities you already have. I don't want to have to worry about my raiders picking interrupts for example, which is already something they've implied are going to move to trees for some specs. But we'll see how that plays out; it's too early I think to be really panicked or upset about anything like that before we've seen or played with the new talents but I also think some caution is a good idea.