I doubt that would really help too much with the OP's actual problem that they mention there. Namely, they want to recreate the feeling of just being much much better than others and feeling their awe and envy. And that actually has two components of sorts:
1) Current best gear looks great and desirable while being special
2) Not current best gear doesn't look great and desirable
You can see that in the OP as well. There, he doesn't just complain about current best gear being a bit lacklustre, but also about those not having it being able to look badass, there not being a clear visual distinction between "good" and "bad" players.
It is the latter part in particular that isn't coming back. In Vanilla, there simply was a world of a difference between someone wearing a coherent set of awesome tier armor and someone in disparate dungeon blues. That is what allowed people to really show off, simply because there was this gulf and it relied less on subjectivity. If you had your full T1 set while others ran around in some mix and match of greens, most people would have agreed that you look better.
Today though, even if your rogue is rocking some new mythic Shadowlands set with some swirly effects that are unique to then current expansion high end items, you won't garner that much attention and people like the OP won't get that feeling of superiority out of it. That's because even 'scrubs' in green questing gear are able to mog badass older sets over it which still look good. And said 'scrubs' might not even be impressed by that super duper gear because, well, to them it might not even look better. They have like 30+ raid and pvp sets alone to choose from, and say the Nighthold Rogue set might just look better to them than the new hotness.
Heck, OP himself might find himself liking the look of an older set more than the sparkly new thing.
And that's why just adding some flourish to current top gear will not really bring back that distinction between 'nerd and scrub'. It simply can't. Because it recreating that can't work by giving new shiny toys to 'nerds', unless Blizz finds a way to make new stuff the most awesome stuff ever to a massive degree - and restricts it 'nerds' only. It could only truly work by taking away the ability for 'scrubs' to look badass. I doubt anything short of making current non-cutting edge gear not be eligible to transmog over while looking mediocre itself would resolve that imho, and that won't happen.