Lighthammer here: I very much enjoyed the vanilla phase, albeit joining a little later than others (I think I was leveling up during BWL 'progression'). I found searching for new items to win and talent trees to flesh out fascinating, especially as an aspiring tankadin. I would 100% welcome a new Vanilla realm.
I think the solution is simple: if there are truly people that are interested in coming to a vanilla realm, there must also be at least one with developer capabilities. If someone like Kurthos, who has a particularly vested interest in making this new realm a reality, is able to find someone willing to work particularly on vanilla content while he handles the database, then let them handle that. Any fixes they make can be pushed to the Primal and Truewow servers anyway, which will help us be able to get our T1-T3 transmog items
As it stands, both existing servers are in incredibly sorry states. I wish there was something I could do personally, but life happens. Perhaps in the event I step down as being an officer in my guild, I may find time to help give back to the community on the technical side of things, but until then my contributions to the servers are limited to the social aspects of managing a guild and helping new players on the Primal realm.