Old gnome is nostalgic to me, because my first venture into Linux was Fedora Core 4. I was still using Win98 at the time, and gnome 2.10 felt so modern in comparison, with rounded corners and soft gradients.
Coming back to Linux after having not touched it for a very, very long time I tried gnome again and I just do not like it at all. It's weird looking. Maybe too modern for me, i don't know.