These are truly uninformed rose tinted glasses
This is due to the fact that the items available in TBC are more balanced and have numerous options for each slot. Overall , gear in Vanilla is not as remembered than Wow TBC gold it is in TBC. But people do remember broken items like HoJ, reju gem, edgemasters etc which are just superior to any other item that fits in that slot.
It's more involved than declaring "they didn't understand what they were doing in the past." They deliberately created shoddy items that were high level, and low level or end game bis objects that were "situational" (based on the situation, your available gearing options and your plan) giving players the ability to make "fun" and lucrative choices.
Classic was well-known for its ability of min-maxing through years of experience with pservers and brilliant theorycrafters alike, simulations taught us that lots of the "bis' gearing options depended on how long your guild's meetings were and when they were clear. Think of trinketswaps or threat vs mit. Resistance to Frost and Fire is another example. Further, a lot of rubbish skips and encounters that were found in Naxx were enhanced by niche items such as major recombobulator, smokey's lighter the bolt of ramstein, nifty stopwatch as well as a gnomish-cloaking device and electromagnetic gigaflux reactivator.
These are truly uninformed rose tinted glasses. Each of the items that you've listed have their place. However, it's certainly not synonymous with the notion that having 40 or more BoE gloves as BiS is an intelligent and intelligent design decision.
It's not the best item design to put every warrior into leather in order to deal competitive damage. Blizzard even acknowledged this and they slightly changed it through AQ/Naxx.
Transmogs are the reason I dislike their appearance. When everyone is sporting a common fashion statement it's dull. I love running along with the Tauren Druid wearing a full moon cloth like WTF? It's funny, however, it's also a smart idea.
Standardizing stat allocations (partly because of improved class design and understanding of what characters need) has ruined the power of stat design to create memorable items. Now all the memorable items discussed are products that are memorable because of buy Burning Crusade Classic Gold things that circumvent the stat budget system: procs, on-use abilities, the high-budget exceptions (War Glaives) and an honorable mentions of weapon speed that permits them to create certain items superior in terms of quality without having to budget for it.
