Never played Vanilla. Started towards end BC.
However both in game and on the forums I have seen people constantly crying for vanilla, vanilla, vanilla "because everything was hard and a huge grind".
But from what I have seen during my time in MoP, MoP is a bigger grind than anything that Vanilla had to offer.
Rep by dailies is an enormous undertaking.
Some of the achievements (200k looted), (5k pvp pet battles) (10k dailies) to name but a few now require mammoth amounts of time and grind, even if you were already well on the way before MoP hit.
Yes imo, this is the best version of the game I've seen because of the fact the content is deliberately drawn out and a huge grind. We have more character choices to roll in MoP than Vanilla, and certainly many more things to do in it than Vanilla.
Really, there seems no point in wanting back the past when the current is even "better".