Anybody in WoW’s 20-year history who ever bought leveling gear off the AH is a fool. The game gives you everything you need, as you level, always has.
The outdoor world was never dangerous, including in vanilla, TBC days.
I was in my 30’s when vanilla released and had played video games since the 70’s and MMORPG’s for several years starting in the 1990’s. I often wonder if the only people who think vanilla was somehow “hard” (it wasn’t) are people for whom WoW was their first ever video game. /shrug