Quote Originally Posted by Kyutaru View Post
Precisly, I agree. It was less of a wizard issue though and more of a "certain spells need to be banned" issue. Most of the high level magics were fairly ordinary and merely powerful. Something your hasted fighter swinging 10 times per round for 25 dmg against the 200 health boss can relate to. The DMG even suggested not allowing every spell to be accessible and without a scroll the wizard couldn't learn it. So part of me feels this was intentional as they incorporated various overpowered spells mingled among the normal ones. Truly spectacular spells for the more heroic campaigns existed in the books alongside some of the worst uses for a spell lot ever conceived.
I do think that a lot of the OP spells started out as intentionally OP boss moves. That, and 3.x was the first edition where high level martials didn't make 70+% of their saves.