Oh, don't get me wrong. Plenty of the gold cards in Legends were complete ass, even by the standards of the time. But some of them were good, and the set as a whole broke a hell of a lot of new ground. In spite of everything else, the set lived up to it's name.
Back then the game was really in a long and wild experimental stage right up until maybe Mirage-Visions, which were the first sets that really began to resemble modern sets in any meaningful way.
Also, the game as a whole today is much more creature-intensive because about 5 years ago, Wizards made a very very deliberate decision that they wanted creature combat to be a bigger part of the game. As a result, we began to see deliberately engineered power creep on creatures.
I don't mind too much, but I think we've gone a bit too far. I think Magic still has a place for strong non-creature spells that cost < 4 mana and that the game should not be ALL about creature combat, but oh well, I'm not the R&D dept.
Sixteen years of my life wasted on this silly hobby. OH GOD WHY.