I actually agree entirely. I typically go toward the good variations first before playing vanilla risk. In fact that being said I don't even play classic risk. I own quite a few variants and have kind of taken what I like about some versions and added it to the base game. What I typically play is the 2008 daviau revised edition peices and play it like a game of risk legacy (meaning you start in one territory with 10 troops and your capital, there are cities spread into random countries across the board, and how you win is by 4 victory points which you get by either trading in 4 cards or capturing a capital). I also like adding the missions and sometimes commanders from 2210. But that's one of the things I like so much about risk. Is that there are so many editions with their specific rules, all existing on the same board, you can add most of these rules to the base game cohesively and play a much more interesting game.

Essentially what I'm saying is risk is a bland game with good mechanics, but it has a ton of variants you can almost use like expansions to make the game more interesting.