I was there in the early days of World of Warcraft. It wasn’t until Burning Crusade when I’d join a server-first guild and really live that WoW life you’ve heard so much about, but while I was focusing on my university studies, I did have a max-level Orc Warlock to pass the time with.
And time definitely did pass rapidly, because nearly everything in “Vanilla WoW” took a while. Individual stats had to be trained, including weapon skills, talent trees needed to be meticulously vetted lest you pay a huge gold sink price to respec (re-roll your talents), raids were insurmountable for many with 40-person group requirements, and things we take for granted, like dungeon queue tools, were non-existent.
World of Warcraft Classic is out today and included in your WoW subscription fee ($15 a month). I’m not sure it would have been received as positively any other way.
Source: Destructoid World of Warcraft Classic is a beast of a game and a reminder of how far MMOs have come