vanilla/classic-era wow has a vibe of it's own that none of the expansions can ever hope to beat, but as someone who leveled no less than 10 characters to max level (60) on a 1x rate blizzlike vanilla private server years before classic ever came out:

don't

mileage may vary on servers with custom content/tweaks, but pure vanilla is a chore, and that's not even getting into the raid progression. i've heard horror stories of classic's raid progression.