Rock had very hot periods and I could see him being more "interactive" with the crowd. I recall him having reactions that were sort of a precursor to Cena's reactions, though the very rich man's version. It seemed like there was pretty much always a segment of the crowd that was ready to turn on face Rock, then he would go heel and win everyone back right away so that the process could begin again. 1999 was a really good period for Rock, but understandably his reactions would suffer later on once he started missing time for Hollywood commitments.
The thing with Austin is that even when his stuff was stale and full of repetitiveness, he still had massive popularity as a face. His heel turn makes perfect sense in terms of freshening up his gimmick and giving him some new angles, but people didn't like it because he was still so popular. Something like Rock-Hogan where the crowd dropped Rock for Hogan wouldn't have happened to Austin any time during his prime, even with Toronto being a Hogan hotbed.