While there are a lot of cosmetic differences, the real definitive meaning of a hero class is that they start at a higher level with their own story justification.
When Wrath of the Lich King launched, the Old World was still largely unchanged from vanilla (they had revamped Dustwallow Marsh in 2.3 - I still think of Bogpaddle as that "new goblin town" there.) Death Knights began at level 55 with the intention of finishing their questing experience at 58 - the level that one needed to go to Outland.
So while they got a big leg-up, they were still one expansion behind.
These days, as a simple consequence of the age of the game, most players have taken multiple characters through Draenor. It's actually a bit odd - I did not feel any frustration with having to go through Outland on my Death Knight - the new class was enough to excite me about doing the content again.
But I also think that the game was a bit more of a sandbox back then. Zones had stories, sure, but they felt more kind of based on geography than story. These days, when you go somewhere, it's usually to deal with a specific threat than to just see that part of the world. It's a double-edged sword - on one hand, our actions feel far better-motivated these days. On the other hand, a zone's purpose and story feels much more locked into its own time period, and there's less of a sense of your being a wandering hero doing quests for the people you meet than being part of a massive military organization that is methodically taking care of crucial objectives.
The level boost that came with Warlords is getting a level 100 equivalent for Legion - Blizzard is wary of making people level up their main through a bunch of old content. And to be fair, there's a ton of content to get through.
But unfortunately, starting at a high level means that you miss out on some of the fun lower-level stuff. Until the Mists revamp, I couldn't really seriously take my Death Knight into Scarlet Monastery, as it wouldn't be a run so much as a slaughter (which admittedly, would totally be in keeping with the Death Knight theme.)
There are plenty of dungeons I'd like to do and zones I'd like to quest through on my Demon Hunter that I'll be way too high-level for.
It's an oddity of the MMO genre that there's this enormous amount of content - seriously, just consider how much content WoW has - but only the most recent stuff is really relevant. And with level boosts and hero classes starting at very high levels indeed, most of that stuff gathers dust.
Timewalking has provided a lot of hope, though. It's a lot of fun to be able to run through those old BC and Wrath dungeons, and Blizzard has indicated that they intend to expand the idea, opening up more dungeons from those eras and also opening up stuff from other expansions.
But while I love running 5-player dungeons, it would also be nice to get some of the old zones the same treatment. This is a little trickier - there's not really a built-in UI for changing the nature of a zone you saunter into. Quests are not inherently designed to reset the way that dungeons do.
Still, I'd love to be able to take my Demon Hunter through Felwood - even if Feronas Sindweller's admonitions for not treating Illidan fairly would be pretty silly (though already if you take a Worgen through Grizzly HIlls, when you rescue the Alliance officer from Silverbrook he yells "Were you bloody bitten?!" at you, which prompts a "What the f**k do you think?" from me on my wolfed-out Worgen characters.)
I recognize that they can't ensure that every bit of old content remains relevant - it's really funny in retrospect (and even at the time) that they made a special call-out for the original Nefarian fight for Death Knights - but it's a shame that more and more, the game has kind of isolated the "current content" as the whole scope of the game.
There have been whispers of an "Adventure Mode" for WoW - which, assuming it's similar to Diablo III's, could solve these problems. But we haven't heard anything concrete yet.
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