I don’t think people read your post, Goldenshoe… 
Lack of flying mounts.
This means you actually see people in cities and traveling from point A to point B.
When traveling around, you get to really experience the world. In retail you just fly from quest A to quest B.
Re-read the OP. It’s asking for one thing that makes Classic better than Retail. Worded a bit strange.
Let the devs complete any content that originally was intended for vanilla but got cut due to time or budget.
Classes. Classic has classes, which make different characters do different things.
Classic: Level 1-60 and an entire planet to explore.
An expansion: Only 10 levels worth of content and a small area to explore.
Classic: Entire world matters. You will find yourself traversing the entire planet at times for various reasons for relevant reasons.
An expansion: Only the small little sandbox matters, and everything is irrelevant outside of that sandbox.
Classic is literally 6 times the content of any expansion to date.
For Blizzard to be honest and transparent. See this:
“Value” makes Classic better.
What I mean by this is that everything, across the board, holds more value to you.
In retail it feels like everything involved outside of XP gain is absolutely valueless and/or automatic gimmes through the leveling process up until you hit the current expansion. Even then, due to countless QOL, it just feels like you’re just going through the motions until you hit level cap and start doing your level-cap daily/weekly tasks.
Admittedly, a huge part of this is an unavoidable result of having at least one expansion. Expansions deprecate and devalue previous game content.
With ZERO expansions, the game from character to creation to level cap seems a lot more fulfilling. Everything from bag space to professions has extremely high value. Travel takes time and so you feel like you’ve actually accomplished something when shuffle yourself to a new zone on another continent for the first time.
Admittedly, a lot of these characteristics aren’t unique to WoW. They’re just unique to MMORPGs of the early-mid 2000s before they experienced an expansion. It’s a catch-22. You need expansions/new content to keep any MMORPG going, but the very nature of expansions starts to deprecate larger and larger portions of the earlier game and de-value more and more percentage of the game’s content.
Contrary to people thinking “retail took the wrong turn”, retail took the RIGHT turn by evidence of WoW’s continued success. It’s inevitable for MMORPGs to end up the way EQ, WoW, and countless others have ended up after multiple expansions.
Retail has to exist in order for Classic WoW to have its demand. Only at this point in WoW’s life cycle would Classic WoW be successful, and only at this point can you even think of providing the Classic WoW museum and have it be sustainable.
It’s more than one - but having skill trees allows me to PLAY more with my character.
I’m surprised this hasn’t been brought up more.
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For me, that one thing is the difficulty/danger of the open world.
Not just for the obvious reasons, but also because of what effects it has upon the perception of the world itself.
In Retail, the fact we can slaughter all non-elite enemies our level with ease makes it hard to really view them as a threat, even in lore terms.
In retail, we see the enemies blow up the seal of dazar’alor in a cutscene (for example), but then we fight their minions and they die like bugs against a windshield.
In Classic, there are no cutscenes and few actual changes in the world, but you’d be amazed how much two mooks putting you on the brink of death instills a sense of fear and respect into you.