Played DotA since Guinsoo's time, sorry, probably been around for way longer than you.

This game isn't hard mechanically, it's hard mentally and strategically. Aside from a very few heroes which may require some mechanical skills most are fairly simple, especially after playing other games which do require a lot of "hand work" compared to this one, say SC2 or any fighting game. Hotkeys were not shit, many pros still use legacy, inventory was a pain but you just had to map it and most of today's active items didn't exist so whatever. Shopping wasn't that hard you just got used to it really after playing for years.

Farming itself isn't hard, lane farming is a joke especially safe-lane unless you get tough enemies in front of you, there are specific limits and you cannot farm a relic faster without stacking than with stacking assuming equal situations, you are plain exaggerating.

LoH is a legendary player and he was great, he isn't any more and being a recent champion vs an old champion is a big deal. vigoss tried to get into DOTA 2 and failed epicly because he is just not on par even when he was one of the best players of his era if not the best.

DotA 1 level was way worse mainly because the competitive scene was a joke, playing online was impossible for ages (PvPGN times...) until GGC and bots came around, there was no money so it was all amateur, etc. You'd know this if you had played.

Been playing this game for over a decade, I know what I'm talking about and I can also see it. If you watched at least a little bit of the old competitive scene you'd see their level was just way too low compared to the current one. We're talking top tier teams that would die with a triple stun safe-lane to an off-lane Zeus because they'd just mess up their stuns. This kind of bad plays or ridiculous thing would happen, the Zeus one is legendary but there were others.

It's painful to watch old replays because of how bad pros were back then compared to how they are now. It's only natural it happens on almost every game when you transition from amateur to big pro scene, players improve. There are now millions of dollars at the line, back then it was pretty much honor.