With all the versions of WoW we have now, it really got me to thinking about which version of WoW was the best. For me it was from 2010 to 2014. Cata, MoP, and WoD are my favorite years. Mostly because it was around the time that I started and when all my IRL friends played.
But what is your favorite Era of wow? It can be for any reason, I just wanted to see how everyone else feels about it. 
The era before the burning crusade, it WAS more difficult and very different that it is today. You had to depend on your skill to play and it wasn’t a level race like it is now, you had plenty of time to do professions…
Loved Legion, everyone was scaled in pvp and hunter pets you could set specs.
I use to bring my spirit bear all the time and be able to rez players with it.
I think cata and BFA, but cata classic is not the OG cata
Wrath. We still had the original talent trees, WoW was not an esports option, realms were still small communities instead of one piece of a massive whole.
The open world was definitely harder, that’s something I miss in retail.
I didn’t know pets could rez people. That’s awesome :o
Yeah. Since we started on the last patch, and several things were either added or removed, it’s not the same. But, it’s still close enough for me
Probably Cata->WoD for me as well.
I consider them an era in the same way I consider Vanilla → WotLK an era.
And Legion → Shadowlands another era.
DF → TWW are so far another set, we’ll see if Midnight & TLT fit the mold or not as well.
Cata was my first time having the current expansion and playing endgame.
So I joined a Raiding Guild, had some good fun but burned out (they were stupidly hardcore and had like a 5 day raiding schedule), then afterward met the people who I’d be playing with for the next decade. Lots of good memories with that team. Really good times overall raiding from Firelands thru Crucible of Storms in BfA. Some of them are people I still talk to pretty regularly - though admittedly much less than when we all played WoW together. There was a period of time where several of us would watch movies or play unrelated games together. It was great.
I had fun with WoW itself, but playing with the friends I made, particularly from Cata-MoP, made it the most memorable time for me. A bit into WoD but I mostly think of the first 2.
Vanilla because my skills were on par with the rest of the player base. Unfortunately I still have a Vanilla skill set.
wotlk by far was the best time i had in wow.
legion is a close second though.
I really enjoyed the unique class focused questing in Legion. The artifact weapon skins being so thematic for each class was awesome. The artifact weapons themselves had their own issues (having to grind AP per spec was stupid) and the original roll out of the legendary acquisition was horrible, but having that many campaigns to play through felt really good for those of us who do enjoy story stuff. Now we just get 1 treadmill story every expansion without any class specific anything. I think the only class specific story thing I remember since then was from BFA when you help a dragon npc as a DK, and you get some special optional interaction where you can try to kill them.
Hard one to pinpoint cause I haven’t been around super long.
I think at the core, Shadowlands (21-22) will probably be the ‘most’ close to me because it’s the first expansion I got to experience all the raids as though they were current. I also started then so it gets extra points for all the core memories.
I have so many ‘feels’ going back to learning about greater Azeroth through the tales they talk about in Ardenwield, finding out who the Primus is and especially Firim and KOBATO in Zerith Mortis. There’s a part of the questline where the spirit of the arbiter actually hijacks your brain and you go mind-travelling into the sky. It was easy one of the most fun times I’ve had!
I agree with the rest of what you said, but the original trees were trash and not-scalable, that’s why they needed to go. What we got after were equally trash with the three choices per row. The current ones are a bit better, but this hero talent thing… I dunno yet.
Wrath was my favorite. Great story. Great Raids. LFD was introduced. Lots of welcoming friendly guilds. Huge player base still interested in helping each other.
Reputation. Maybe Folklore
Legion and right now. I really love TWW
Easy between Vanilla and probably middle of MoP when they start phasing the zones and took away world defense channel. And realms weren’t merged. It was imo better community. Everyone knew each other and familiar with who was what and such. Knew the guilds.
The open world was more tedious, but I don’t think the game was more difficult or took more skill. Skill sets were more limited and as a warlock I was just spamming one button most of the time in open world. Things just took longer to kill.
Also when it came to raids, they proved those were far less difficult as pretty much every raid boss in classic fell over in 60 seconds. The mechanics currently in the game are a lot more challenging than anything vanilla/classic had.
BC and WOLK. I had good friends to play with in a decent raiding guild.
Sadly all gone 
DF-TWW It’s never been better than it is now. I can gear up and start any content in the game in a day. I don’t need to do quest chains to get into a raid I’m not obligated to do anything except what I want, and there’s an ocean of content in the game.
That’s why I’m playing a lot of Classic atm. Server identity was very big for me and I hate CRZ a lot.