Try wowscape if you don't have the patience to level all the way up. You can get to 70 in a matter of hours if you know where to go, and you can see all the endgame crap and get the top loots in a day or two after that. Pretty much all the content is the same as live, except fights aren't scripted. That makes Illidan a boring EQ style 20 minute hackfest while half afk, but oh well.
http://www.wowscape.net/ -- really easy to set up, just change realmlist.wtf and make an account through the wowscape page. If you have hard drive space to spare, just make a copy of the wow directory and then change the realmlist in the copy and make a shortcut for wow.exe and play Wowscape via that, and live via the original install.