Might be interesting for people to share non-game mechanics related differences they remember. You know, nostalgia stuff.
Many of the better players I played with at the time had been EverQuest raiders. Right or wrong that was a big influence on how we played including the player conduct rules (e.g. ninja looting).
I don’t remember Warrior being the class everyone played. That was Rogues, Hunters and Mages. In retail Vanilla it was a surprise that late game and with all the right gear that Fury was good DPS. Combat Rogues made up the majority of the melee DPS in the raids I was in.
DKP seemed to be the way raiding was done, again an EverQuest thing no doubt. It was almost revolutionary to my guild when I just let them need or pass to save time late Vanilla going into TBC. We had a few threaten to quit over it but we eventually smoothed that out and it was great (for us).
What are some of yours?
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This was certainly true. Most people couldn’t/wouldn’t play warriors, but now that media is by far better than what it was, I noticed many more people playing warrior than I remembered then.
Horde were more known on the server I played on for playing Warlocks, Druids and Rogues. They were the most common class back then. For Alliance it was Paladins (obviously), Mages and Hunters.
There is very few that has been different from then and now though. More common to see things that weren’t normal outside of the game than anything though, such as the zoomer mentality. That’s about it.
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Mega servers didnt exist and communities actually did.
You cared about your reputation or you got ran off the server. Now I couldnt tell you even 1% of the names Ive grouped with, outside my own guild.
Raiding was more rare. When you saw someone with a certain item they stuck out and it gave you something to thrive for.
Overall Vanilla WoW was just a better gaming atmosphere.
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sorry but what is “retail vanilla” 
He likely means back in the day. 04-07
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I’ve found that reserving the term ‘Vanilla’ for the original launch of WoW in the early 2000s and using ‘Classic’ to refer to the launch that began in 2019 works best.
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Unarmored mounts. They should have been included in Classic.
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Seeing the old Alpha models in Elwynn and dead mines for humans was fun.
The children summoning demons in goldshire.
The Legend of Zelda quest line was fun to redo.
Day one of playing, never having any clue what Warcraft was and thinking that my warlock was supposed to be a melee caster…for 20 levels…boy that rogue was mad when I needed on that cruel barb.
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Having a big blue blizzard wizard turn up in raid asking “what are you guys doing?” This died off in late TBC with Activision ownership of blizzard,
The community of duelists outside Org, IF, SW.
Keeping healers out of combat to res the dead in raid (early vanilla), this was nerfed by blizzard…
Using the PvP battle standards in raid, also nerfed around the same time.
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Wall jumping.
You used to be able to scale so many walls in the game and get to crazy places, it exists in some specific places still, but it was way more “abusable” back in the day
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no strange qualifiers, no strange reserves,
LFM UBRS, full on rogues.
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oh yeah, i remember that. good times
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I remember really early before some fixes (read:nerfs) paladins were what everyone wanted as tanks and dps. Anything a warrior could do a paladin could do better.