Vanilla WoW was such a different beast to current WoW.
People usually acted better since you couldnt jump server to server with your characters, you were semi on good behaviour otherwise news of who you were and what you did could spread fast making you infamous for all the wrong reasons.
Druids? Healers. Paladins? Healers. Shaman, probably the same. They could do other things and at times did but often healing became their job as they couldnt tank as good as a warrior or fight like other classes.
Enemies hit a lot harder and had more health, there was a reason you had to heal up after a fight. You really had to watch how many you engaged, engaging several could be fatal easily enough for some people or classes.
Hunters had arrows or bullets, Paladins carried Ankhs, Shaman had...something. Warlocks made soulstones which they only got via killing an enemy.
Hitting 60 was a pretty decent achievement in itself, it took much more questing. Oh and you didnt get a mount until 40. Yeah until then you ran...which was nothing impressive. Want a mount and you hit 40, hope you had the gold for it. A lot of people didnt.
Hit 60 and you manage to get an epic mount?! Dude, you were hot shit, those who did have mounts which started to be more people often only had the normal mount. Having an epic mount meant you were fast, so fast. It was mind blowing after spending hours remembering running everywhere across two continents for a majority of time. Sure getting a mount was cool but that epic mount....that speed........it was nirvana.
Most people were in greens and blues. Greens were common enough, blues could be gotten with some quest or lucky drops and dungeon stuff. But purples...now those were harder to get, people could easily get jealous of you if you had a purple because for a good long time, it was nothing to scoff at. You likely worked for it. Grinded for it. Paid a fortune for it. Basically you did something to earn it and it was the sort of thing some eyed with envy.
Fights had more tactics that needed to be done, essentially crowd control. Its a lost art these days but back then you had to stun/sheep/daze some enemies to win a fight against elite mobs. If you didnt you were going to die.
Rogues were godly. No seriously, you had naked rogues with only a pair of starting daggers killing people decked out in epics. If you can find it watch the World of Roguecraft vids from back then, you see how good they were and I kinda blame part one and two of that vid that brought enough attention to them that they got nerfed/fixed.
Rogues were so good and powerful, mainly because stealth back then was so much more than it is now. There was no flying unless you got a FP and those were far and long in between. It could take you a good many minutes to fly somewhere. On PVP servers rogues were easily 60% or more of the population due to their abilities/OPed nature.
Know the nature of WoW kinda has a go go go go go go go nature to it now? Back then it was more slow slow slow. Unless you wanted to die. Especially in dungeons and raids. You couldnt rush. Not unless everyone was wearing epics out the wazoo. Even then you had to be pretty careful. Mana went a lot quicker, healers had to rest to get back their mana for one.
One of the big things about WoW back then was it did feel like a real living world. You couldnt zip around like you do now, it took time to get there. It felt vast. It was half the experience in so many ways. It really made the game feel so much more that it lacks these days.
Hey you wandered into a zone slightly under levelled or extremely so. Guess what. You just pulled a crocolisk. Your going to die. You may get away and if you do youll feel so alive.
Hey did you hear there is a legendary weapon?! Its orange.......ORANGE. What a weird strange thing. Youll probably never see one. Does it even really exist?
Why are so many night elves hunters? Why are they so bad?
Who rules the battlegrounds? The Horde! Their racials when that was a big deal actually were more PVPed based and made a different. Will of the Forsaken was BIG.
Extensive quest chains that lead to extensive chains that lead to extensive chains that lead to extensive chains! Thats how you got to Molten Core.
Holy shit your doing MC?! Your one hard core Mfer. Hell being in a raider back in those days took longer overall, again enemies hit harder, had more health, respawned meaning you had to clear trash over and over again and running back into the instance from a grave yard could take a bit of time. Dungeons and raids in those days were hour long affairs. Minutes? Hahahahaha, thats silly.