My first bad experience with another player. :o

[Dark-Saviour]

And what was their answer? No, not "Git gut" but "I don't believe that all these players are really new here".....

This is potentially correct.
I did all the ARR content available at the time (outside of Coil) back before I stopped playing a few years back. After returning this time, I continued to do all the ARR content while grinding a good portion of what was left my Zodiac weapon out before even adding HW, let alone SB to my account.
So after the returner status wore off, I was a 'sprout' despite having hundreds of hours logged and pretty much everything pre-3.0 done.