"It's like poetry; they rhyme."
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Burning crusade fan, checking in.
Probably still grinding honor hold rep for that tabard, aren't you.
I have exhalted with all factions through wotlk, skipped panda, and also with numerous others in legion and cata. Much nerd points. Don't much care for the modern game, though.
Burning Crusade codified daily quests, grinding, flying, and class changes for the sake of class changes, all of which made WoW objectively worse. It was the beginning of turning something that felt like lightning in a bottle, and made it blatantly obvious that the game became a 2nd job. Yes, there were absolutely grinds in vanilla, but it wasn't something set in stone.
Thorium Brotherhood, Gates of AQ supplies, and Bronze Dragonflight rep to ring the gong were legit grinds. But very few individual people had to do them and guildmates could and did contribute.
Personally, the daily quests you mentioned are among the absolute worst things to ever happen to WoW and gaming, IMO, along with loot boxes and paid cosmetics (also sort of began with the WoW TCG in TBC).
It's been a long time since I've played WoW, but if I remember correctly, most of the vanilla grinds you listed were intended for entire guilds or servers, so it limited the impact on individual players, and/or forced individuals to group up (the entire purpose of MMOs), making the grind more fun.
The guild I was in grinded the hell out of Molten Core, other events, and materials to equip just one of our warrior tanks with the legendary sword (can't remember the name). It was a big achievement for us (a non-hardcore guild) and really fun to do. We were just stepping our toes into Blackwing Lair when TBC released.
Unfortunately, post vanilla WoW, the grind was codified into the individual gameplay loop, making it boring and unfun. I hate describing things in terms of feelings, but it best encapsulates the experience: vanilla was really fun and felt like a lived in world, post vanilla felt like a 2nd job. Even with all the shiny new stuff post vanilla, it never captured the magic that vanilla did. Even the woefully ridiculous 12-48 hour long 40v40 Alterac Valley PvP matches, where you could fight for hours in a stalemate, log off and go to sleep, go to work the next day, come home, log back in, and get into the same Alterac Valley match, felt really epic, stupidly funny, and fun. Now (last time I logged in), all AV matches are rushes to the end, with the Horde and Alliance just running past each other with minimal PvP.
The vanilla devs felt like they just wanted to make a good game. Post vanilla, it felt like WoW, and every other MMO, just wanted to pad out player game time. It's why I no longer play MMOs, or any other game that has a hint of padding in it. It's stupid and anti-player.
[Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]
;)
There was the occasional oddball who farmed furbolg rep in vanilla. Literally everyone did something like it in BC.
It always got worse but BC was fun at least and the core game wasn't absolutely shite yet.
I will agree that daily quests became a thing and were a big reason I stopped playing as it felt like never ending grind. At least before that the grind was progressing.
Thing was though, the limit on the number of dailies gave a dopamine hit unlike the unlimited number of them these days. Removing the cap removed the desire to do them at all for me since it got rid of a nice casual sense of accomplishment. I have 2x characters with "of the shattered sun". Up until 2 expansions ago I still used to tank using Thunderfury. The game is just unfun these days.