Emergent player behavior is a unique challenge of mmo development. It's kind of silly to even argue over what was or wasn't intended by the devs. The original EQ devs mostly took the right approach though which was to design around the emergent behavior rather than just slam through a quick patch to force player behavior back onto the rails.
Some around these parts even argue that is why everquest was good and modern mmos suck and are bad. The whole idea of "balancing" classes is kind of silly too, to a point. Achieve the perfect balance and now the classes are kinda interchangeable and none of them feel particularly bad or good at anything.
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