ARR was better

[Avidria]

Curious as to what made the glamour system "more robust"
Surely not the meaningless inventory clutter of requiring a frankly silly number of different kinds of prisms

[Rekh]

OP's correct. To this day it's still my favorite "expansion." It felt and performed like a balanced open world and instanced world. They tried to at least utilize the open world for hunts, relics, levequests, etc.

Those things still exist but back then it took more time, which by extension kept the open world alive longer. Right now relic quests don't even exist; you just do rouletes for weekly tomes and you get a relic for free.

The jobs were better designed as well mechanically and even aesthetically in some parts.
Also, I have to go back to the open world, it was dense and had more design significance to it.

Open world since heavensward has been a regression for the sake of flying.

Eureka really showed us what they could do if they didn't have to worry about flying mounts.

[Zarkovitch]

ARR was great expansion, however remove the nostagia it's better than EW in terms of a game but not better than SB,SHB