This is due to the fact that the items available
Phase 1 gear is definitely more boring than phase 1. Classic. This Wow TBC gold is due to the fact that you'll find a bigger amount of loot and more options for you to farm or select from. I used two healing weapons through all of Classic cause the KT hammer never dropped. It's only phase one however I had a lot of options to choose from, and each phase has a new healing weapon. Every upgrade, despite the fact that there aren't any famous items such as Benediction or the Xerox, will bring memories of good times.
This is due to the fact that the items available in TBC are more balanced and offer several options for each slot. The overall gear in Vanilla is not much more popular than the gear in TBC. People do remember broken pieces of equipment like HoJ Reju Gem, HoJ, edgemasters etc which are just much more powerful than other item available for that slot.
It's a little more nuanced and nuanced than "they had no clue how to play back then". they deliberately designed crappy high-level items, in addition to the low-level and end game bis objects that were "situational" (based upon the event your gearing choices as well as your overall strategy) that allowed players to make "fun" as well as rewarding choices.
Although classic was well-known for its ability to minmax years of server knowledge and brilliant theorycrafters alike, Sims taught us that the majority of the "bis gearing choices' depended on how long your guild encounters were and clear times. Think trinketswaps and threat vs mit, fire/frost resist, etc. Additionally, many trash-swaps and encounters with Naxx were made more enjoyable by specialized items such as the smokey's lighter and major recombobulator the bolt of Ramstein, and some cool stopwatches, a nifty gnomish concealing device , and the electromagnetic gigaflux activator.
These glasses aren't very educated. Every one of the products that you've mentioned have their location, which is true. But that's nothing to do with the notion that having 40-something BoE gloves that are BiS is the right and prudent choice in design.
It's not the best item design to cheap WOW Classic TBC Gold force every warrior into leather to take on competitive damage. It's even evident that Blizzard recognized this since they rethought that when they launched AQ as well as Naxx.