Warcraft still has this in its latest version as well, The Frozen Throne. This was immediately addressed in Starcraft II but lead to other issues that also coincided with balance problems as well. But Starcraft also had tons of other highly outdated designs and mechanics as well. Also despite being able to select all of your units and buildings at once in Starcraft II compared to Brood War, the APM levels are still the same at competitive play. So it changed absolutely nothing in terms of the dexterity required. The focus is just different.
In Starcraft you could not select multiple buildings at the same time. You had to individually click on every production building to make units. You could not queue units and upgrades in sequence. So to select any upgrades in a building you had to clear the entire queue. You could not chain rally points from buildings to make unit move a little easier. You could not rally workers to resources from buildings you had to manually click them. There are tons of other examples. Point is that the APM in Brood War is often about overcoming the dated design in the game. The APM in Starcraft II is about controlling your death ball and armies and everything else is practically automated compared to Brood War.
Yet most top players still seem to prefer Brood War or Warcraft III compared to Starcraft II.
I do find it interesting that that's the case with BW and WC3 being preferred over SC2, while with Age of Empires, 2 is the most preferred version. 3's mechanic changes feel very foreign compared to the first 2 AOE games, and AOE1 is very archaic in comparison, but is apparently still played in Vietnam and China, due to it being able to run on ancient computers. To give AOE2 credit though, the medieval setting being much more popular, compared to the ancient setting in AOE1, the significant gameplay upgrades, and Civilizations feel more unique with Unique Units, Unique Techs, and unique Wonders, makes it understandable why AOE2 is the preferred game of the series.
Speaking of Age of Empires 1, that game also had numerous mechanics, similar to BW, that make it feel clunky. The big example was that in the base game, you can literally only make ONE unit at a time with military buildings. The Rise of Rome expansion made it so you can queue multiple units, i.e. multiple Chariot Archers, but you couldn't queue other units in queue. That was fixed with Age of Empires 2, with being able to queue multiple different things at a time, i.e. queue 2 Archers and 1 Skirmisher at an Archery Range. Another example was the drop-off buildings for resources in AOE1 makes Storage Pits more useful, since you can drop off Wood, Gold, Stone, and meats (Hunting, Fishing), while Granaries are only drop off points for Berry Bushes and Farms, whereas the drop-off buildings in AOE2 were self-explanatory, Lumber Camps for Wood, Mining Camps for Gold and Stone, and Mills for all Food sources. (Sheep, Hunt, Fish, Berries, and Farms) AOE1, just like BW, also did not have the ability to set rally points for your buildings as well, which was added in AOE2.
