I played on the PS3 and I get where people are coming from on both sides of the issue. The game does "run" on the PS3 at low settings with a pretty stable frame rate, but it definitely has the lowest specs for the intended platforms. I personally expected them to drop PS3 support for the next expansion since we're talking about technology that's 10 years old, and that would lock in those limitations for another 2 years for new content. This doesn't mean that they won't let you play 2.X and 3.X content on PS3, but they won't allow you to access any new areas or continue the game without upgrading.

In terms of limitations, I personally noticed three major issues when playing:
  • Any dungeon with a large number of cutscenes would pretty much add 2-3 minutes of wait time, which meant you'd always be behind others or that you'd always force the group to wait for you. These wait times also became much worse on high population servers when trying to teleport to Mor Dhona.
  • It was pretty much impossible to do the Hunts when they came out or participate in Odin. You can't even deal damage with aoe if they aren't rendered on your screen, and their massive popularity in 2.X meant that anything more than 20 people meant you weren't going to see anything.
  • Due to it's networking limitations, the PS3 version always had exraneous lag on enemy aoe, meaning that people on the PS3 pretty much had to either predict when these attacks would happen and already be mid-dodge or react immediately with no hesitation in order to dodge even the longest charge times on avoidable aoes.

If you notice, the first two issues prevent SE from putting in an event where you either get cutscenes or transition in the middle of a fight, or from putting too much emphasis on Hunts and anything they might implement as non-instanced content. So yes, the PS3 is and always has held back content in the game, even if it is stable in regular instanced content.