decided to try wow classic, got hit with nostalgia quickly followed by "wow this actually fucking sucks"
literally just did exactly this in almost exactly the same way (femme tauren shaman) for exactly the same reason (retail is down for approximately five years) and came to exactly the same conclusion
there's something about the overwhelming size of the tauren starting zone and the slow scrolling quests text boxes that make the whole game Not That Good when it was old
WoW launched at precisely the right time (Just as internet in general was becoming mainstream) with a well known and well regarded IP (Warcraft was RTS games at one point, I forget that a lot) and was magnitudes more user friendly than every other MMORPG at the time.
It also came out at a time where "It is an RPG that is ONLINE?!?!?!" could be your entire selling point.
Like damn it sucks to go back to (or play regularly) but also I can see why it resonated so hard.