I do like your first suggestion if you are saying it the way I think it is: making haste obtainable a little more than how retail has it, but not how eternian has it. I think they need to downgrade haste, seeing how it is the main stat on both realms and has been for so long, which they are doing in Project fire. I would still like to see haste playing a decent role in our stats.
Here is my suggestion:
Give us an option when we upgrade gear to choose a stat build that we would like for the gear upgrade. Like we would have the choice of a chest piece for example. There are 3 chest pieces you can choose from for the upgrade. 1 has a higher amount of haste then the others. 1 has a higher amount of crit than the others. 1 has a higher amount of attack/spell power then the others.
With this, players will be able to choose which stat they would like to build up. If you go into haste, you hit a bit faster than most people, but without that 100%+ crit chance and a bucket load of attack power. And vise versa for the other pieces. This gives players the opportunity to experiment with different gear sets or mix stats along the way of upgrading to the max gear level.
As for VIP, if you are feeling about considering this suggestion, I'd love to share what I have in mind for the VIP sets.