Always, ever, obviously a design flaw. Leaving players to sort it out instead of fixing it was even shittier; they don't have the means to fix it properly.
Players continuing to play such badly designed games is why things don't get better.
Someone tried to bring me over to Everquest from Asheron's Call back when they were still the chocolate and vanilla of 3D MUDs (I'm thinking it was around Christmas '99, since I'd been going heavy in AC throughout the Beta for most of that year) and that was something encountered in the first five minutes, right there in the starting area. AC had that problem scouted in its core design, sorted before it even got out of Alpha. I dropped EQ like the hot piece of garbage that it was, and still resent every player who put up with it. Mind, that wasn't its only failure -- the almost complete lack of character customization and forcing fantasy religion on players was also awful. Sadly, they had more players, because, I suppose, most people have terrible taste.
Design flaw in your opinion. You know that just because you have an opinion that doesn't make you automatically correct. RIGHT?