The whole Vanilla v. Classic debate is silly. 1.12 from the start it hasn't even been the same game. Also with all of the strats and optimization people have figured out (both at the end of Vanilla and over the years), the fact that all the guilds have had months to prep for everything that they knew was coming ahead of time you can't compare it to what even top guilds did or might have known at the end of Vanilla.
The pinch is these clowns are arguing that they were doing everything today's hard-core guilds are doing, and knew just as much about the game, mechanics,, etc as we know today
Which is laughable, especially when you consider that new things are being discovered/understood even today in classic.
Example:
the hardcoded 32 buff cap limit that means players risk losing valuable world buffs if they go over the cap. This came as a surprise to people in MC because private servers didn't have that hardcoded cap.
The devs then had to explain that this was part of the vanilla engine, and although some things counting as buffs could be re-coded to not be buffs, the 32 limit wasn't going to get increased (which is why some guilds ban HOTs).
If this was known about during vanilla then:
A) it clearly isn't mentioned anywhere in places like thottbot/wowhead, because my understanding is thottbot comments helped guide/steer private server development/behaviour.
B) HOT cancelling was never a thing in vanilla (which again reinforces that the 2020 wbuff meta is not the same as a guild that has got BOSS to 5%, getting ZG/Ony to get it to 0.
Likewise for things like "Devilsaur Mafia's", I remember a few rogues farming leathers and finding someone with the recipe to craft devilsaur around the time we were going into MC. But did every single rogue? No. Did every single fury warrior? No
Likewise, did every rogue/fury/hunter farm truestrike shoulders/dal'rends from UBRS?
Did every UBRS group know to zone in/out to check for Jed Runewatcher so casters could get briarwood reed?
When briarwood reed dropped, did every group know that "damage and healing" items are best prioritised to casters and not healers?
etc etc
It's like dropping someone off on a new planet and saying their objective is to go from Point A to Point B in the fastest time possible. They have no idea where they are, what they're doing, where to find supplies etc - sure they can find their way to B. And over time, more people who attempt the route will optimise it and get quicker.
But the idea, that someone doing it fifteen years before someone else can be just as efficient, knowledgeable etc is a farce and anyone who argues otherwise clearly has an inferiority complex