Wow - it's hard for me to imagine MM6-8 without say Meteor Storm. I remember the one map in MM6 with literally hundreds of drakes closely packed together. Even with meteor storm they were hard to clear. That one was always my favorite, as it was the map-clearing spell. Incinerate was nice for packed rooms, there were always a few good ones. What seems strange, though, is that the other MMs seemed magic-heavy, while MM9 seems just the opposite.
The other change is that with so few barrels\fountains, character creation is much more important. In the other ones, who cared since they'd all have stats over 100 shortly anyways?
I gotta agree that I liked the ironman part of the early Wiz games. Not only were you dead, but your disk was immediately altered, and you couldn't copy the disk! As a result, you had to be VERY careful as to what you did - no reloading!
