As a player from ARR, I don't think the ARR and HW "glory days" are as glorified as people make them out to be. I remember at the end of 2.5 that I was more bored than I had ever been in my life. The only content we had back then was extreme primal mount farming, Secure PvP (and only Secure), Final Coil of Bahamut which was pretty hard to get a party for depending on your server. Housing, crafting, gathering, fishing ect and hunt trains. The only lengthy content was relic and back then nobody liked it. Heavensward was more or less the same but we had Seal Rock, HW relic, and Deep Dungeon mixed in. If you really think about it, this formula hasn't changed over the years, there's just more retro content to act as filler. There's a lot more stuff I can do these days than I could do back in those days. It's just not anymore engaging than it was back then is the real issue.