"Clunkiest RTS"... It's not trying to be an "RTS", that was the whole point. It's an RPG/RTS hybrid. Micro over macro. Tactics over strategy. Map presence over economy. Flipping 70/30 base/unit management to 30/70. To the point that it was marketed as a new genre, RPS. It's what they kept hammering on for two years pre-release.

If you want an archetypal RTS go play a game that's designed to be one, like SC or TA. Warcraft 3 simply isn't that type of game and was never intended to be.

Mechanically it fell pretty short. Yeah, it fell so short mechanically that one of its mods built around its central mechanic, the heroes, has directly spawned the most popular game on the market.

What fell short here is Blizzard. They have failed to iterate on both SC/WC3 and D2. SC2 and D3 are the first games that are not massive improvements on their predecessors. We are not seeing any new DOTAs come out of SC2 because it doesn't have a vibrant mod scene like SC and WC3 had. Why? Because Blizzard didn't release SC2 with a good map editor (in terms of usability/accessibility) and in five years haven't bothered to improve it. And that's just one of several areas where SC2 failed to deliver. All people do on SC2 is grind the ladder because everything else except the single player is either missing or poorly implemented.

People have explained this to them in detail. They know. They don't care. Similar story with D3, it's just not as good as D2 (though I hear the expansion improved it a lot). They simply didn't use to fall short like this. Whether they've lost design talent or whether it's because their new owner Activision isn't giving them the time/resources/freedom Vivendi used to, I can't say, but anyone who has been around since the early or mid 90s and isn't a drivelling fanboy can see that Blizzard is not as good as they used to be.