The way they backed them was that they were trying to appeal

Too diluted even for a noob. The way they backed them WOW TBC Classic Gold was that they were trying to appeal to a more general player base. It wasn't a great idea for players who were not casual.

It's probably a win-lose scenario for developers. Certain gamers (like you) are hooked on the completely fake sense of control, agency, and a unique identity you got out of placing points in exactly identical things in exactly the same order that everyone else does. If you limit yourself to feasible choices that are balanced and have no right answer, they feel overwhelmed, sad, and constrained.

Talents were an awful mechanic. The smart people looked up the best levelling spec and mindlessly followed it, noobs and casuals got wrong. The smart people looked for the best raiding spec, and then they simply followed it. Raids with absofuckingly identical warriors and warlocks as well as mages and rogues following identical BiS sets and sporting identical rotations, produced raids that were full of identical specs. There isn't any homogeneity anywhere in the world and there are many ways to get yourself fooled, and be called a noob by everyone else. There is a need to pay taxes in order to remedy the issue.

It's true that you can be able to feel an illusion of control and authority when you make your fourth skill in "Do +1% more" or your thirty-first one in "This ought to have been a included level forty capability". But that's not true. You're not actually developing a skill or mastering anything that is more complicated than a 5 year old's book of buy WOW TBC Gold stickers. (But it's possible to do so.) I'm guessing that many of enthusiasts of Classic are those who believe that solving a 15-year-old's puzzle game is enough to make them a hardcore gaming god.