So the early game can "probably" be more interesting. What are you even arguing with me on? I agree, later content is cooler. Once again, I can't see the point here.
I think much of your criticism is pointed towards the magician class. And I understand that sentiment. A lot of early game abilities of the magician are direct damage spells. This is for the simple reason that I want at least one spamable damage spell for every type of element for the mage, so that people can pick their flavour.
I modified this to the extent that I created a synergy between water gloves and lightning charge and made fireball a small AoE effect, so that all abilities have their niché.
Could the starting area need a revamp to make it more interesting? Probably. But making lowlevel content takes the same amount of resources as making highlevel content. But highlevel content has the tendency to "last longer"; in other words, has a much higher return of investment, as people tend to blaze through the early content quickly.
Anything I add to the lowlevel part of the game takes away from the highlevel zones. And I think we can all agree that we don't want that for now.
The lowlevel part of the game is functional. It may not be as polished as the latest content upgrades, but it's acceptable and good enough to be fun.
There's a lot of concepts new players have to grasp in the lowlevel zone. Having a "down to the minimum" and slow-paced design here allows players to learn about all these concepts without being pressurized by the game.
There's the threat system which is kind of a new concept in WC3; there's the bag system which might be very intuitive once you got used to it, but a little bit confusing nonetheless. There's the crafting system and the skills, stats and secondary stats. There's quests stored to the player's code with actual item rewards now (which has been one of the latest content upgrades, btw).
I lot of other games (including DOTA) fail with giving the player room and time to understand new concepts. I've played several DOTA games where I got kicked for trying out a new hero I never played before ("get rekt, noob!"). This, imho, is a failure of design in DOTA. There is no progression that allows you to get accustomed to the game when you start new. You have everything available to you right from the get go. There is literally no learning curve in DOTA. It's a straight line.
Hopefully now I answered some of your sentiments and made it clearer why I think the current design is beneficial for the game.
TL
R:
1) any new lowlevel content means less highlevel content as it takes away from the same production resources
2) starting area is functional to allow players to freely explore some of the new concepts of the game without pressure
