Originally Posted by
Sollioswoop
So, as far as we know, there won't be transmog etc on Classic. This means those items are still unobtainable for Live servers, unless they somehow integrate it so that you can unlock, but not use on Classic, transmog appearances. It's doable, I'd imagine, but I can't see Blizzard putting that in very readily; if for nothing else, it'd receive backlash if you had to have a 2nd subscription (which we're assuming is the case, I don't know if it's been confirmed) to unlock stuff in the game.
So I guess the other thing you could consider, is just having the Bronze Dragonflight NPC appear when the content is no longer level appropriate. You know, at level 85 or whatever, they start appearing - after they would have been canonically introduced to the player within the game.
So this one has me curious; what did they do with the IDs when they launched Cataclysm? Surely the items would remain in the database, and they wouldn't do something as stupid as to completely overwrite IDs?
Lorewise, you could always swing it the other way. There are now problems with the old version of deadmines thanks to alternate universes and whatnot, and adventurers need to fix it.
As for easier or not, I'm hard pressed to believe people would bother to do these outside of transmog/fun runs. This means running to the dungeon, and dungeon finder is definitely a faster method even if the dungeon is easier. Hell, Dungeon Finder is the only reason I still suffer through Dire Maul/Mara. At best, people doing the old version when it's level appropriate would be incidental.