Heroic Chests
I think it would be nice for them to do that (I did already get my heroic chest thanks to being in the first beta stress). I don’t know if it would be easy for them to do it; the beta people were auto-flagged for it as a consequence of having to revert their account when the beta ended.
For searching, it’s been long acknowledged the forums are in poor shape. The contractors that made them are long gone and until all-new ones can be implemented this is what we have. The search feature is useless. I think there is a sticky on how to google search for desired posts, and it offers a better method than mine which is to google for “GW2 forums (keywords here).”
While it certainly would be a nice gesture, i fear having to do that to the thousands and thousands of ppl(if not millions) that still have the old editions is likely to cause their servers to overload, that is a LOT of info, so if they do it i am sure they have to be very careful at least how they do it