Yes/no.
Even though I low tier progression raided in BC/Wrath, I do remember running lots of dungeons as I still needed gear from them. I ran them as they were worth running.
In Cata I remember Heroics being a bit hard the first month or two of the expansion but still easily puggable. By the end of the first patch they were only relevant for non raiders when they updated the ilvl of gear drops.
It was pretty much like this until now. Dungeons became irrelevant for people who did higher end game content pretty quickly into the expansion. There was no carrot and it was too easy on the highest level.
When challenge mode came out, if gave people that past dungeons a reason to dungeon again.
I think it’s success evolved into our current M+ as making dungeons challenging and giving the carrot as content players want.