New expansion, BC all over again?

I was surfing the internet on death knights, trying not to get too excited about their arrival sometime in the fall, and I started to fear a few things. I have several characters, one is 70 and a few in the 30-50 range, and I was debating whether or not to level the lower levels up to 68-70 or enjoy raiding on my 70.

I then remembered the launch of BC and remembered how quickly my gear was replaced. I hopped onto the wow bandwagon late and so when my first character made it to 58 I was in Outlands, and the 10% less exp to level/10% more exp from quests was out so I got 58-60 in a day with rested xp. I had run BRD and had several blues from there which I thought to be great, and by the time I was level 60, the only thing I had left that was pre BC was a ring.

I'm wondering how big the difference will be from 70 BC epics to 70 WOTLK greens. I wonder if they will make the 70 epics we are working so hard for now longer lasting, or if people who have all epics will be in all greens and blues by level 72; which raises the question, will someone in full tier 5 or 6 be on the same level playing field as some noob who just got to 70 in all greens by the time they both level up to 71? I think their should be some sort of incentive/reward that makes it so the extra time we're putting in now benefits us when the expansion comes out. Being 4-5 months away, imagine how many more people will have a 70 with all high end epics.

What do you guys think?