As much as it might not be what you want to hear, the main appeal for this game for lots of people (I would say the majority, even) is nostalgia. People just want to come back and experience what they used to experience when they were younger and more carefree. And I think that the current updates are probably doing more to damage the game than to help it.
It's all well and good that you want to add more features like worlds, extra combat areas (like the beastmoon and deckathlon), miscellaneous additions like the new pet update, and even stuff like jewel socketing, and I like the resolve that makes you continue to uphold a decade-old game. But when the resolve goes to reworking and "modernizing" the game that so many of us loved, it seems like a mistake. I can't imagine many people were upset about the "clunkiness" of the early game. At most, people would note it as an extra point of charm. After all, the main gameplay loop, being the combat, is still sound and pretty fun all these years later. The removal of the soul of the game (of course this all subjective) just seems like a mistake to me.
Though this may seem like incoherent rambling, since I'm having trouble putting my thoughts into words here, I would suggest an enhanced classic mode. Bring back the old spell animations, character models, even the old dialogue in places where that would be feasible. My vision for this would be classic mode servers, where they take the old design of the game from around 2012 or something, and you can switch between them and the modern servers on the realms tab. Heck, you could even put it behind a membership wall if you have to.
I understand this is all just my own opinion. But I think more people would agree than you'd think. Just something to think about.
