It’s the super nerfed versions as per the beta. However they did originally say they were going to continue the titan rune dungeon thing from Wrath classic so maybe harder versions will be available but after the first tier?
At least there is wiggle room. In WLK, for pve, I took every single talent that directly increased my damage on bosses. I would skip ones that are fun for ones that are passive and boring. Something like shorter cooldown on sprint is less useful than having 2% extra hit.
In Cata I am forced to pick something other than just straight up DPS talents in order to fill out my talent tree. It may just be one or two talent points, but it is within those one-two talent points that true choice lies. Having replayed Classic and seen how the vast majority choose to spec, I find myself much preferring the MoP style of talents. For instance, for Outlaw rogues in BFA the guides said “pick killing spree”. I liked Blade Rush more, so I went with that. There was no noticable DPS difference between me and the other Outlaw rogue in our raid (who went with killing spree).
MoP talents are also categorized. One tier might pertain to survivability; do you want: Cheat Death, 30% damage reduction from single target attacks when using Feint or do you want your Crimson Vial to heal for more? None of these has an effect on your DPS. Some may argue that Feint is the best one, but also most difficult to make use of. You may just end up gaining more from picking one of the other two. You didn’t have to pick between gaining more health from Crimson Vial or, say, Alacrity, which was a stacking haste buff. That would have been a non-choice.
I find those choices to be infinitely better than “pick every single %-talent that will directly impact your dps output”, personally.
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But Cata is exactly this with less free points? A small damage increase isn’t mandatory, a talent that literally defines the mechanical aspect of your class is mandatory to function. In WOTLK you had some talents like this, in Cataclysm they reduced the talent points and increased these talents.
Most specs in WOTLK had plenty of spare talent points where you may be talking about exactly the difference between 1% hit (somewhat insignificant damage) and a utility, those are effectively free points because your spec doesn’t fall apart if you don’t take it. WOTLK had many variations of builds being used even within the cookie cutters, in addition to that it had many hybrid builds being used, by example Healhance, which was used on world first progression.
Cata has none of this, every single player will run exactly the same build with vary little variation for most specs, other than PVE vs PVP, because there is no real variation to be found there, at least in WOTLK you did have the option for a utility vs small dps increase, and in plenty of scenarios they were worthwhile.
The more I read this forum, the more I understand how difficult it must be to compel this community. Everyone have different opinion about wow, know a different “wow story” and had dig differently into the same constantly evolving world.
Random thoughs: there could be some very interesting scientifical studies on the matter 
My own story : I’ve started at the end of vanilla, loved BC, enjoyed Woltk very much, then cataclysm arrived and it broke my heart. A lot of friend stoped there (or after MoP), we spend years on same areas and realized that we could not connect anymore with this constantly evolving world…
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Yes, Cata suffers from the same issue. My argument is that in Wrath you can spend 100% of your talent points purely on DPS increasing talents (and most people do). In Cata you can’t, you must pick something else*. Maybe it’s like ~95% you can spend. It is within those remaining ~5% that you have some genuine choice, which isn’t a lot.
In my experience, most utility is kind of useless. Maybe there’s a niche spec for an encounter for world firsts, but I doubt it’s widespread. Whenever I opened inspect on someone I’d often find that their spec could be found on Icy veins or WoWhead. I myself stubbornly ran with talents I thought were fun, but I never got any use for them in a raid environment. Eventually I just bit the bullet and took those extra %-hit instead.
And yes, Cata has this problem as well. I do think that the way Cata locks talent trees is kind of boring, but I still prefer the Cata talents over the WLK ones for the reason stated above. I hope that Cata dungeons will prove different from WLK’s as well. I much enjoyed using my utility in TBC dungeons, and only spamming damage abilities in WLK has been as boring as I remembered it being back in the day. I want to use my class utility.
*Based on the specs that I’ve reviewed. Maybe it is not true for all specs.
Let people play Cata all they want.
Just give Era servers for Wrath and TBC, then we let you play your beloved Cata and stay in our belowed versions.
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To dictate what people can play or not sounds quite controlling. Thankfully people have a choice of their own.
With that said, I do support the idea of keeping servers of previous iterations, I just don’t think Blizzard will do anything unless they have monetary reasons for doing so. The entire Classic franchise has been treated as a cash cow, and Cata won’t be an exception. If anything, I suspect they rush it in the hopes of skipping MoP and driving the playerbase to where they get most revenue.
I want NOT dictate what people play!
I want free choice for all – and we get only free choice if all “Classics” get Era servers like First Classic. So now I want TBC Classic Era & Wrath Classic Era, and in 2 years – If still play – you’ll hear me support Cata Era servers, even if I did not played one hour Cata.
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If you played BC in 2008, 30% of your playing time was spent running from angel to body.
In LK, it became a little easier at low lvl.
Kata has been simplified even more, especially in the starting levels and dungeons.
But 80+ should be more difficult.
It is not about raid mechanics, those are def harder on retail.
To lvl on classic takes way more time and effort, even simply doing low lvl dungeon can get you killed many times, crafting items, getting them, always been more tedious on classic. Like I remember seeing how much gold I’d need to spend to go to Naxx every week and how many w buffs to get I simply lose interest. Or compare quest chain scarab lord with any chain on retail…nope no match. WHere it was really pain in the b and took mass effort and time race.
Legendaries turned into not something rare and unique but something everyone get by simply keeping up your garrison.
So I mean drinking beer while playing you could do on any version of the game tbf, but the aspects that shifted the game calling it casual changed. Now you just buy 80, drink beer and do pet battle while npc kills mobs for your quest. In classic you aggro 2 boars and die. And that exactly made it feel like challenge, that I turn into hero and not log in as one already
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This only true for PvP players!
the thing about classic tho , its 90% afking on a gryphon while suffering from blizzard bad flying points which take 10+ min to move from 1 place to another so you can take this damn flavor from felwood or sneak to darkmoon fairy , its all boring chores which get old really fast that why WBs didnt really make it beyond vanilla , i wouldnt call that “hardcore” its just boring chores that dont respect your time ,the only thing is diffrenet in retail is that now you control the grypon ,and you dont have WBs anymore which is better if you ask me
the best thing blizz ever did is removing legends , i stand on that , screw farming 0.01% drops
m+ forces you to be 1000% focused on the game , with common mobs having tons of mechanics that will wipe your team if you miss them
what pretty much hunters and locks were doing in vanilla
tell that to the mages ,who were AoE farming million elites
for some classes it was , for others it wasnt , locks , hunters and priests were pretty much afking through the whole lvling process and raiding were warrior playground while pvping were mages bullying sessions and the only world pvp you really get is max lvl fully bised rogues gerfing starting zones
In fact, it was mobs that were killed most often, especially in dungeons.
It was easier with the players. Players had less health)
Cataclysm was just better version of WOTLK but what people didn’t like about it was instead of their favorite arthas on the cover there was dragon and instead of death theme we had void theme
People for some uknown reasons like death theme
I for example never liked wotlk or TBC because i just can’t take demon and ghouls and skeletons seriously
on the other hand i’m huge fan of Void lore and OLD gods and cata + MoP hit that note for me way way better
WOD again was disaster because once again we were fighting legion and LEGION expansion i really liked but not for lore only gameplay
On the other hand BFA i really liked because of LORE but the gameplay was garbage
TLDR
Looks like everyone will find their cup a tea in this big universe that is world of warcraft
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WoD, you silly, but only with cutting content and garrison social isolation.
In my opinion Cata isn’t classic because it destroyed the old world. Thats why TBC and WotLK are still classic eventho most of the Vanilla world is not relevant anymore for anything other than levelling. Cataclysm took away the Vanilla world and replaced it with a new one, hence not classic anymore. The introduction of transmog was another item, you can’t tell the progress someone has made from the gear he is wearing. And there were major changes to the talentrees, homogenizing classes and removing uniqueness of each class, wether that was a good thing or not is another discussion.
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Yes - and this why we need Era servers for all xpacs, please!
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small indie company doesn’t have money for some pure wotlk realms. hahaha
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“World got replaced”
So what ?
The first ever car got also replaced and the second car isn’t Classic ?
We are at Dragonflight now stop being a Vanilla Andy.
And understand that Vanilla is not the “only” Classic …
Classic means old like a old DVD or a Shelby even a Crown Victoria is a Classic now and so is Cataclysm most people didn’t even played Vanilla, Wrath or TbC. So for them Cata is their Classic.
Cata still has a hybrid talent system, still has the ability to wear different guns, still has the oldstyled ui, still has no dragonflight, still has no significant gameplay changes it’s the same as wrath but better that’s it.
How the world looked is completely irrelevant it’s still the same you are just coping insanely.
They just made the capitals more realistic and destroyed or updated some Areas that’s it. Tanaris is still Tanaris and Taurens have water now in the desert gratz kid.
Blizzard should just add the old world for 5 Million Gold and 150$ as a premium realm or something so that people stop cry and enjoy the ugly non flyable 1999 world. Oh there is SOD and ERA 
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Small, Multibillion, what difference does it make? It was probably never a question for them if they could afford leaving some Wrath Servers, the question they asked was “Will it make us bigger profit than we’d get otherwise?”. And considering we’re not getting Wrath Era the answer they reached was likely no. Not that we’re ever going to know whether the potential Wrath Era would generate losses or simply smaller profits. It sucks but that’s how corporations like that sees everything.
Would be great. That is a vision I’d gladly get behind but not a reality we’re living in. Although I might be just biased when it comes to Wrath since my revisit was far from pleasant.