If yes, were they as invasive as nowadays ones?
If not, do you think people will resort to addons with Classic?
Yes, and depends on how you view them, but yes?
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Yes, of course. invasive? not sure what you mean by that.
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Probably the wrong way of phrasing it (might be because I saw my Raid Leader UI and it was kinda overwhelming considering I use the default one)
Oooh, what kind of addons?
Somewhat, they came much later as I can recall. CTMod was a popular add-on but, if I’m not mistaken it’s long gone…
Vanilla’s difficulties will make one reminisce about grinding for 800g for a Tauren mount, it took FOREVER…
I started in early 2005 and used addons of all kinds from almost the very beginning. Bag and action bar addons was well as unit frames. Decursive and other raiding addons as well.
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Invasive is a good word for it, add-ons tend to make one lazy 
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Lazypig healbot decusrive Bigwigs etc. I’m missing a few but those where big named ones. X-pearl bartender and so on
Wasn’t the bar mod in place back then? Bartender maybe?
I believe it was bartender that I used
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Add ons have been around since vanilla beta. If i remember correctly the blizzard team that tested molten core were using a 3rd party damage meter.
Yep, I think they have been around, as well as Dominoes…Same concept…
they were around but not pervasive, it took a while for them to gain traction.
They used to be much more powerful and automate more things.
Who didnt love an addon that let you assign a dispel order in advance so you could hit 1 button and have it dispel according to that order?
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Yes addons were very much a thing in vanilla and all the basic addons I use today existed in vanilla.
Bartender, Boss Mods, Meters, Weak Auras… these were all things in vanilla.
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lmao at this idea that addons weren’t pervasive in vanilla.
Decursive literally played the game for you and every de-curser in your raid had it.
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Anything that automates gameplay will be banned
If anything the average Vanilla player probably had more addons than the average retail player.
Over the years tons of addons have been incorporated into the base UI.
For example:
Raid Frames (the OG raid frames were non-existent)
HealComm (the green bar on a frame that estimates incoming healing)
Quest helper types (putting stuff on the map to tell you where to go)
and more…
Some of it was good some bad.
There was a lot of code in vanilla that would allow a person to practically create a bot program as an addon, where the addon would make choices on who to buff/heal/cure/etc and required very little input from the user. They are not bringing back that old code, the newer stuff is quite a bit stricter on that kind of thing.
Vanilla WoW started out with LUA code already in place so that the ability was there to build addons.
Of course, you will have the usual snobs who will QQ that addons are invasive. Like the Healer that takes twice as long to heal, letting folks die, because he/she took they hit the wrong function key.
I always like to link this video when this kind of thread comes up. This is Ion Hazzikostas’s UI back at the very end of vanilla (he was the GM of the well-known min/max guild Elitist Jerks):
So yes, as you can see. custom UI, add-ons, the works.