Yeah, basically every decision from the early game that they later 'smoothed over' turned out to be important somehow. Except for spell and ability scaling with gear, they messed that one right up at the start and didn't fully fix it til the end of Burning Crusade.

I could write an essay on this subject but the two I'll mention now are cross-server dungeon/BG finder (which destroyed much of the social aspect to the game) and loot tokens instead of loot drops.