This may be common knowledge to others here but as I’ve started my journey into classic and down the road of nostalgia circa 20 years ago, I’ve started to remember things differently than they are here.
Examples:
I remember hurricane being the capstone balance druid talent, not moonkin. And I remember innervate being the capstone resto talent. I remember tranquility being a 30 second channeled heal that basically made everyone unkillable as long as you could maintain it.
I remember paladins not having group wide blessings and struggling to keep 5 minute blessings going on a 40 man raid. I remember blessing of kings and consecration being retribution talents, and repentance as a talent ability.
I remember reckoning bombs being used to kill world bosses
I remember shamans having a serpent totem that spit fire, rather than the generic searing totem.
I remember shield blocking being a flat damage amount instead of a percentage, making it useless against hard hitters but extremely op against swarms, and I seem to recall aoe farming warriors using that with thunder stomp.
I remember ranged weapons having a dead zone, preventing hunters from shooting things up close.
I want to say I remember mages being able to use a spell to unlock things and not just rogues, but that might be from something else.
It feels like I’m in some weird Mandela effect where things keep popping up that aren’t as I remember them.
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it is a flat damage amount.
warriors use shield their shield block ability to get their dodge/miss/parry/block chance over 102% not to mitigate the damage of normal hits, but because a blocked hit (in pve) cannot be a critical hit or a crushing blow
they do.
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Remember when is the lowest form of conversation.
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I don’t know what classic realm you’re playing on, but on both Classic Era & Anniversary Classic hunters definitely have a dead zone up close where they have to switch to melee.
I can’t speak to the other class abilities, but I will say that Classic is the final version of vanilla WOW with all the patches from 2004, 2005, and 2006 rolled in. So some of that stuff you could be remembering from the earlier days of vanilla. For example, Paladin Blessings changed significantly in 1.9 (January 2006) - they weren’t totally raid-wide but the Greater Blessings that got added would be cast on all raid members of whichever class you cast it on.
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Some things you mentioned were from earlier versions before 1.12 and some were even from alpha.
To say it’s not vanilla isn’t entirely accurate. It would be more accurate to say that they didn’t and don’t precisely follow the ~2 year progression of patches with every little ability, talent and item change. They have 1.12(ish) with a vanilla like content release schedule. It’s close enough in my opinion to call it vanilla, but it’s not 100% spot on.
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I’m confused. OP, you do know Classic is based on 1.12, right? Like, the twelth major patch of Vanilla? It’s the last version of Vanilla in it’s most balanced/complete form.
It would be silly for Vanilla to launch in 1.0 with balancing and all for so many reasons
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yup, you remember the OG vanilla days, the early patches. cherish those memories 
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I mean, it makes sense but some of those earlier builds were fun.
I remember when I first started playing WoW the battlemasters were added and I wasn’t sure what that meant but it sounded good lol
I remember when the gathering professions didn’t have a changing icon when you scrolled your mouse over the resources.
There was one patch where they messed up and orc shoulder armor was shrunk by half and it looked so silly 
they fixed it maybe a few weeks later.
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Havent tried hunter or warrior first hand yet, but I heard someone bring it up and (incorrectly) assumed it was gone.
it is because its patch 1.12 based which was Last Phase 5-6 in original vanilla, and first the game with patch 1.1-1.8 had spells and talents changed heavily in last patch 1.12.
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Among the various changes that definitely have happened since the release of Classic 2019, there are several things to note from where the Classic 2019 client even started.
The classic client, and consequently WoW Classic has been based on the data from last-patch progression from OG Vanilla WoW, indeed every Classic expansion has followed suit with the last-patch being the starting point, and then #SomeChanges on top of that.
While several changes were introduced to WoW Classic, prior to the launch of TBC Classic and Classic Era, there have additionally been changes brought to the Classic Era client, often after such changes have been made to other versions, such as some of the seasonal games, or sometimes even apparently for ease of maintenance across the multiple clients.
The article Restoring History: Creating WoW Classic Panel Recap - WoW is an interesting read and glimpse into what lead the Classic team to the Classic 2019 starting point, and probably worth a gander:
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Vanilla wow was a lot harder and classes received their current talent trees during different patches, which meant that depending on the patch, your class was way better off than those who didn’t get their revamps yet.
I do think it would be really fun to play a version of classic that was scaled back like the original, and I think it would cause a lot of current classic players to become better players in PVE, but I doubt it’ll ever happen.
Warlock and Warrior talents were revamped when BWL came out.
Hunters with ZG came out two months laters
Druid with Nightmare dragons release a month later.
Paladins with AQ release 2-3 months later.
Priests 2 months after that with 0.5 armor sets
Mages and shaman with the release of naxxramas 3 months after that.
Rogue 2 months after that with the release of xrealm bg’s and 1.12 release.
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I started vanilla with my brother and my dad just before BG’s were added. I remember I had a nightelf druid and a gnome mage and going into WSG at level 10 with my mage. I was horrible.
hate elfs and guh-nomes in 2005
hate elfs and guh-nomes in 2025
some things never change, except I’m a Druid this time instead of a Hunter
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Vanilla really ended in 2007.
a lot of us can’t accept this fact.
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most of the differences you mentioned are from earlier patches of vanilla. Classic is built on top of patch 1.12 which was the last patch of vanilla before 2.0 TBC pre patch. Peace.
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It’s one of the reasons it always annoys me a bit when people say vanilla was so easy because people cleared MC so fast in 2019. I mean, sure, it would have been easier anyway with all the knowledge, addons, internet speed etc that we have these days. But classes and specs saw so many tweaks and outright changes during vanilla. Raids no doubt were harder in 2005 and even 2006 simply because of that.
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Not being like true vanilla is a good thing. If it was then = zzzzzzzzzz
You’re on Pepperidge Farm’s hit list now.
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