I can't really provide a detailed answer, but in broad strokes the anniversary editions are intended for those who preferred the fluff, and sometimes the rules, of the oWoD.
I'm not well read on everything in the nWoD, but like you I really liked the old Mage. 2nd edition in particular saw a lot of play among my friends. And when I picked up the nWoD Mage (The Awakening) I was horribly disappointed, to put it mildly. My actual reaction was "this sucks elephant balls through a straw!"
With time, I've mellowed a little and come to see that the new game is its own animal. It's not trying to do the same things as the classic, and some people might think the new setting is more interesting. Personally, I can't adapt to it though. And I maintain that putting Atlantis in your backstory is
always a sucky move, no matter what.
Now, on to the anniversary edition. The intention is to maintain the old world and its fluff, while cleaning up the rules. How that will turn out remains to be seen. I'm a backer of the kickstarter, but only on the pdf level, because I'm a little on the fence.
See, in the other anniversary rules, they've reverted a very important rule that I actually liked the way it was. History time. The exact timeline is now a little hazy to me, but as I recall the very first iteration of Storyteller ran with 3 variables: size of the dice pool, target number for success, and number of successes needed/degree of success. Later on (I seem to recall 2nd ed for most of the games, but don't quote me on it) this was simplified to 2 variables by setting a fixed target for all rolls. But now they've gone back on this to the original system, and IMHO this is a horrible, horrible idea. I'm not a big fan of dice pool systems to begin with, because of their poor transparency, and adding more variables just increases the mathematical opacity far beyond what anyone needs.
Okay, rant over. Hope I've at least informed you a little more.
