Welcome man, I too used to be a Jeep diehard (concerning offroading) and have been watching the H3 for sometime now.
I sold my old tricked out ZJ in order to get my new H3 and have never looked back. I am really impressed with this H3 in stock form and the dam thing is just so pretty at the same time which is odd as in the Jeep world you tend to think the uglier the better. LOL
Go have fun in it and you will be surprised to see how well the H3 does in stock form. The IFS in the front does "OK" but the rear articulates MUCH better than I had expected. In fact, I dont think my long arms really had that much more reach than the H3 (in the rear).
I went from this
to this =)