To a point yes. Absolutely many of the quality of life changes brought about in recent expansions are amazing. Vanilla Wow was flawed in many ways, but it was also challenging, difficult and full of incredible amounts on content in a way that the newer game is not.

While I agree in large part with what you’ve written here, no one who has played WoW from the beginning considers Cataclysm as part of “classic” Wow. The majority of the “dumbing down” of the game (and perhaps not coincidentally the decrease in subscribers) began with Cataclysm.