World of Warcraft at launch had relatively low polygon count models and worked flawlessly on low-spec graphics hardware, but the animation was spectacular and miles beyond what any of its competition was doing. The feet of a moving model actually touched the ground as if it were a solid object; literally every other MMO I played from that era had models where the run or walk animation was completely decoupled from movement speed, with feet sliding around disconnected from the ground.

In addition, WoW had coherent and consistent art direction with characters, enemies, and environments all feeling like part of a thematic whole.

Blizzard had clearly spent ridiculous amounts of time and money on the visuals of the game, the animation in particular. They just did it while targeting low-spec hardware to avoid limiting their audience.

There’s a very big difference between cheap for the game developer to make, and supporting cheap hardware.