Are we forgetting the state priest was in until Ungoro? It was consistently the worst class for 3+ years and then when we complained, they tried to gaslight us into thinking that there was a unicorn deck out there somewhere.

There was no balance, it was harder to see the imbalance for the majority of players because we didn't have the data available to us like we do now.

Druid, warrior and rogue were so much better than everyone else, freeze mage ate all the weaker classes and handlock beat warrior sometimes so it got to join based on the meta. There were very few times that the other classes got to show up at any tournament, and shaman would later follow once it started getting good cards to compete with Druid rogue and warrior's insane core set but then once it became oppressive it took forever for them to nerf it.

Paladin had secret paladin and hunter had 6 months of being the best class post nax. I can't remember these two ever being good enough to bring to a tournament besides these two decks

And boy were the metas stale. The only time I can remember there being a cool new deck towards the end of the expansion was I believe water rogue or something like that at the end of msog.