I think you are overexaggerating MO1. Generally situations like that came down to one side cheesing a mechanic to gain advantage or all running meta builds against a team of non meta.
We did a 6 vs 14-16 2 days ago against some decent players. Mostly because we had a good comp, good builds and they did not. It can still be done but it requires very niche circumstances.
Only cheese we got back then was the slightly better FOTM(Flavour of the month) weapon. But and a big but at that, the difference between things was minimal.
Most used the fabled pokey stick, a dagger on a spear handle that counted as spear. Hit for 5 compared to GB at 25 but was crazy fast due to having dagger head.
Thing was movement was king, you could dodge, you could even run away from swings to "dodge" without doubble tapping. It took less time to kill eachother, that is if you managed to hit someone with the tiny arcs we had. We didnt have parry, and it was hard af to manage a perfect block that simply negated all damage with no further advantages.
Most without shield didnt block at all due to the tiny blocking arcs, sweet spots was aswell tiny and bad hits did little dmg.
Stamina was spent fast but regained quickly unless you spent all.
You could kill 2-3 players in 1 stam bar and would regain it in around 5-10 sec.
In combat healing was almost non existant compared to now.
Basically game was harder, more and harsher penalties as in stam out and die in seconds. Lower reaction times made trained individuals a great deal above untrained peasants.
Material differences was lower making near everything useful.
a naked could flawless a tungsteel warrior since you could perfect block as naked and receive 0 dmg and wouldnt get hit by massive but slightly more than if you where in armor. That last part is only good it changed.
But yea I seen nakeds with noob weapons slay several steel armored warriors after rezzing (back then at full health with no reserve system or food system to drain you from rezzing).
And this is simply the top of the iceberg. Much has changed my good Kuthara, and little for the better sadly. This is the second coming, I seen exactly the same before although the start of MO skill was way more important then the start of MO2. MO was before its time though and had many technical limitations they cant use as excuse this time.
This time its all about broadening the intended audience and not finding bad ways to get around tech limitations.
You know I wish I was overexaggerating. I know how wacky it sounds when we all remember where MO went and where it was when you joined, at that point it was already too late. The AQ era waws the last time of the good state of the game even though MO had declined for well over a year by then. Release was a let down compared to beta when they actually had the balls to develop their game to what they promised. Then they lost 23 of the 25 devs and the game totally went to shit.
Theres a reason why guilds like AQ suddenly after 2 years got way better you know, it was through magic patches