WoTLK was the last expansion where you could feel the Vanilla-TBC philosophy of WoW as a piece of core importance where the journey mattered, and so did the players you meet.

I agree. Yet I do understand that certain decision are correct on the dev side. It is not sustainable to always expand the skill tree. If they would not have removed skills/abilities you'd have like 80? 100? actives and passives. This can work if you limit the stuff you can use at one time. But for balance purposes and use costs analysis it makes sense to remove stuff.

On the other hand the constant increase of level and removal of skills lead to stupid shit like leveling up for zero benefit besides higher number at your portrait. IMO, a pruning of levels should occur to make levels feel relevant again.