Crossposting because of relevancy.
Stab weapons through the ground without bouncing. Attack next to walls all day without being stopped. Overhead straight through teammates without hitting them. Spin 180's while stabbing people. Spin 180 while overheading people with a pike (aka long spear) through teammates while next to a wall, sheathe it and switch to one of your other three weapons.
Being level 42. No color-coded chat log. No score, no valour. No banners on scoreboard. No banner-balance. No proper custom banners. No DTV/Rageball. No such thing as "crossbow spec" (at least, wpf didn't improve accuracy at all). Vastly less armor choices. Less weapons. Heirlooms giving percentage-based bonuses. Everything people complain about being OP now was vastly better. No official NA server.
Good riddance.
also
NA siege being really good
For a long time there simply
was no NA siege server.
No upkeep and 30 minute map resets
AKA automated escalation and eventually 90% of the server using milanese plate, 41p swords of tears with backup flamberges or greatmauls and pocket pikes and shotgun arbalests everywhere. I remember at one point there simply could not be any melee fighting for the first minute or two of every round because everybody would just camp construction site forts on rooftops and shoot.
On the bright side of the past, I liked the way people approached fighting due to the old xp system. It made for fun rounds when people were fighting in a group, even if they weren't really trying to fight together. Even that had its downsides, though, and the camping got ridiculous (only so many times XP BARN!!11 can be enjoyable, especially when aforementioned escalation came about).