Yes. I've watched some videos on wow by Kevin Jordan, who was on the original team. He said the original game was built on 3 pillars:

1. Advancement over time.

2. Player interaction. Hard content should be hard in order to push players into working together to overcome challenges.

3. The world is a character in the game. Even when you eventually got mounts later in the game, they made it so mobs can knock you off & daze you. The world is big and full of wonder. Especially at earlier levels, just getting from point A to point B can be a journey in itself. Wanna play with your friends who started in a different zone? Fine, but just getting there will be an epic journey.

They abandoned those principles later on. Eg, by adding "sidekick" characters you can summon when you're playing on you own, to overcome hard content. The point of that content was to push you into making friends with other players. Flying mounts made the world small and safe. Just point in the vague direction you wanna go and go AFK for a few minutes. They also added more and more teleports, so you don't have to schlep overland yourself. And the LFG system.

It was a really different game back then. I didn't get that much out of classic wow. But I'd enjoy playing a new MMO built around those same principles.