Earlier quoted context omitted.
to Vanilla WoW. DnT were rockstars. 2009 was after the drama, and the migration to the Horde side, right? I stopped playing around that time (it was distracting me from RL stuff, as well as removing some of the elements that made it such a great distraction), but the first five or so years of that game are really special memories.
DnT died in vanilla and Napster joined during the reorganization led by Kiberian and a few other old DnT on Blackrock, yeah. It was an interesting time for many reasons, like you said the first waves of casualitis (lol) were sweeping through, it was becoming harder to fill raids, many people who were thought to be good players in naxx were the same types that were letting scorch fall off but they were still demanding…
There were people on my friends list for whom I'd drop anything to go and help, and vice versa. I had deep, deep late-night conversations with strangers who'd become anonymous friends. I remember sitting on Southshore and typing back and forth with a guy who'd never told anyone in RL he was gay, but felt safe to share that with us. I had a guild-mate who stayed online until the very last moment before he deployed to Afghanistan - and I remember our jubilation when he logged back in nine months later, and how every raid thereafter, for a time, was built around gearing him back up. WoW was how I maintained a connection with distant friends; it's how I got to know my brother-in-law; it sustained a romantic partner and I while we were apart for a while (our guild became her family as well: she never logged in without expressions of support, and invitations to go do [whatever]).
Anyway, that was my experience in a non-elite guild, on a non-special server (we did eventually kill every boss, though - except Naxx; bloody Naxx). I could go on for ages.
Oh! One more thing: PvP was never really my thing, but I appreciated the sense of honor that developed (at least on a our low-pop server) once people realized that too-blatant kill-farming would mean the other side would stop signing back up to a battleground. Most people had toons and friends on both sides, anyway, so PvP stayed a game (though, oh, what a dreadful grind) and not the pissing contest it turned into when they put in cross-realm combat. It was a village, and that turned it into arbitrage.
I watched a lot of DnT videos, and "Puresin" rings a bell. I'd love to read your recollections of that time.