Yeah, it's kinda humorous and kinda sad, but velious is really just a nostalgia bin. NTOV is shitty raid content at the end of the day; its just the first real raid-heavy mess so nostalgia paints a different picture. When you actually get there, and then again on yet another TLP server, you have to be really fucking stubborn to not clue in to the fact that even without a key barrier its actually slower upon entry to clear than Vex Thal, the fights are trivially simple, and when you're done the raids there's just nothing else to do still.
GoD was't just too hard. I fucking loved the difficulty back then. The problem was poor balance and poorer bug problems. Knights were dick in hand on any new content. Non-charming DPS were quite often the same. Doing ikkinz 6 mans with 2 clerics because you have to, then doing ikkinz raids 6 times because the NPCs later on keep eating turn ins, etc. Funny enough, now that it's more or less fixed and the game is tuned down, it's a fucking awesome expansion.