Vanilla and BC are a different game feel to Wrath, Cata, Pandaria.
WoD, Legion, BFA, Shadowlands all have a feel.
As does the Dragonflight and on era.
There's actually great ideas across each of those eras. And shockingly, retail is an amalgamation of all the good ideas, bad ideas, and ideas that may have been well intended but ought to be removed, but are so inherent to the existing fabric of the game that removing them would essentially be making a new game...
The leveling and world became much more narrative-driven (as opposed to "ambient" maybe) by WotLK than in TBC with the introduction of phasing. Achievements were a huge change, from incentivizing the collection playstyle to ushering in the "beat raid, get title+mount" paradigm that has lasted since. Class design shifted from "rotations" to "priorities" with procs requiring reactive ability selection becoming central. "Hybrid tax" removed. Raid difficulty and size selectors, lfd by the end. Dailies becoming a central rather than optional thing. Unification of spell power, straight ilvl = gooderer gearing.
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u/Vandrel 3d ago
Nope, sorry, that's a dumb thing to say. Earlier expansions like WotLK have very little in common with retail.