when your personal story started at level one and then progressively went up in level as you did each step, rather than be split into chunks every 10 levels.
when the level 10 personal story reward included a guaranteed Black Lion Key
when, as a result of the two above factors, Human Guardians with the Commoner storyline could be made and played through their story to level 10, and then deleted and remade, in order to key farm
when certain events and hearts in level 1-15 maps involved using an item - such as feeding cows in Queensdale, or using cattle prods in an event in Plains of Ashford
when transmutation stones were used to fashion your characters, which also required two pieces of gear: the one with the skin that you wanted, and the one with the stats you wanted
really long ago back in the beta days when cultural tier one armour costed 1g+ a piece, tier 2 costed 30+gold and we donât talk about how much tier 3 cost
when ArenaNet actually cared about dungeon content and had a team that worked on the content there
when the Trollâs End jumping puzzle in LA wasnât bullshit
actually, when LA was still something like a city of pirates that looked like a city of pirates, with buildings being made out of grand ships and wooden structures so high some of them towered over the cliffs
when ArenaNet cared about holiday content and we were all wondering why the hell the Lion Statue was getting cracks in it until halloween rolled around and we all went âOh shit!â
Festival of the Four Winds (rest in fucking pieces)
Queenâs Gauntlet (rest in fucking pieces also)
When we all got super excited for the first time our Second Birthdays rolled around in game only to be Mildly DisappointedTM
when being in a party with friends meant you could more than likely get into the same Mad Kingâs Clocktower instance and have fun actually racing them and doing the content with them
when Tamini Death Markers had skulls on them and seemed vaguely more threatening (along with other now-just-sticks that use that model)
when Guardians had Tomes as elite skills that emphasised the idea they were support-style classes and allowed them to more directly provide said support to party
when the World versus World maps counted towards Map Completion and everybody in the world thought this was basically a terrible idea, because it was
when the WvW jumping puzzle entrance had an informal rule of âno murderâ - which meant anybody who camped it was a massive dickhole that didnât like people having fun
when you had to pay money to re-trait your build and you could only do it at a trainer
PvP glory vendors split up by rank and selling chests based on that rank or craftable weapon tokens that youâd use to throw into the mystic forge for the purpose of Fashion
when there was an armour set that had + Magic Find on it as a stat
âRetrieve the Orb of Power for our world!â event in World versus World
when PvP gear was separate to PvE gear, meaning if you did both kinds of content, you needed to have two sets of gear, and also meant that if you were a Fashionista, you had to deal with looking terrible until you could get the crafting tokens for the skins you wanted