For example this purplish word "Epic" was something a player playing hes first lvl 60 char for the first week of the lvl60 -ding, had never heard of. You first looted an rare item and after that you made a bunch of hard and time taking quests to upgrade your item to another but better rare item. Then you raided those 40man instances to upgrade your items into an epic version tier1-gloves, for example.
Then came tbc, and after getting lvl70 character to revered state of, lets say lower city, you run into an heroic instance and loot your first epix.
Game became too easy for those who had played two years of vanilla.
Thats probably the most biggest reason i miss vanilla.
And yes, those stratholme runs were awesome.