The game is nothing like you remember: this is a super simplified version of what you missed.
-SE released 3 mini add-ons with augmentable gear that was powerful
-SE released 3 abyssea add-ons with powerful gear/weapons and new places to exp from 75-90 (which are still insanely fast exp from 30-99)
-SE tried to release new types of endgame and relatively failed
-SE started rebuffing old content bit by bit (new Arch Dynamis bosses, new Arch Nyzul Isle, New Arch Salvage, Arch Kirin(of sorts) etc etc)
-SE added a new full expansion with Adoulion and gear could now push you above lvl 99
-SE added extremely hard endgame which pushed your level to 119 by giving you ilvl119 insane weapons
-Everyone lost their ***and went nuts
-SE continued to rebuff old endgame types and old gear (AF gear, dynamis gear-multiple times, and soon to be the abyssea gear I mentioned)
-SE decided to slowly bring all the old content to ilvl119 status, so we'd have options and to resemble lvl 75 cap of "oh use relic for this use af for that!" since they're all badass 119 if you work hard enough for them
-A large version update happens every month and one just happened today, so we got a bunch of new stuff to explore.
This vid will help you and your girlfriend get back up to functional, welcome back senor if you do decide to give Vanadiel a shot~
I apologize for how quickly the video moves, it's a massive amount of data in the time limit sorry!