It wasn't bad because that's just the way it was. There wasn't anything to really compare it to. No MMO at the time had any questhelper-type interface, in fact most online games at the time didn't even HAVE quests. Being able to supplement your grinding with quests was "OMG how did people play MMOs before quests?!?!"

Thottbot was around since beta, and was pretty well fleshed out by the time WoW launched. Allakhazam was around too, but I never really cared for it. If you got really stuck on something, you could look at the comments on thottbot.

End-game wasn't the same as it is now, and there weren't many true raid guilds back then. Someone in full blues was amazing, and I remember when I saw a rogue with 8/8 shadowcraft and thinking they were insanely hardcore to have the full set. Dungeons had no player limit, so it wasn't uncommon to see 30-40 people in a raid doing Stratholme or Scholomance, you just had to be sure to drop the group before killing a quest npc to get credit for it. When they made the fix so you couldn't do it, I remember thinking that all those dungeon quests became impossible to do. Seeing someone with any epics at all was just amazing.

My first character to 60 had about 16 days of playtime (priest), and I thought was pretty fast. My second took 14 (warrior), third took 12 (rogue), and fourth took just under 10 (mage). There weren't as many people all at 60, so it wasn't too hard to find "end-game" groups willing to take people in their high 50's. I did MC for the first time on my priest at 58.

Gear was vastly different too. Attack power? Spell power? Haste? There were a few items that had flat +1% or +2% to crit, and very few items that had "increases damage and healing by spells by up to X", but for the most part it was all about stacking the base stats.

Epic mounts were EPIC. 1000 gold was a LOT. There was no exp->gold for quests at 60 and no dailies, so all the gold coming into the system was from looting gold and vendoring items.

Shaman shoulders were funny looking: http://www.kadaan.com/images/screens...106_195157.jpg (and seeing a hunter wearing them let you know they were bad)
Getting 2 arcane crystals was like winning the lottery: http://www.kadaan.com/images/screens...606_235946.jpg
AV was the best place to fish, and you could get the highest level fish with low level fishing: http://www.kadaan.com/images/screens...605_005728.jpg