When the game was much smaller and the playerbase was millions less, yes. We know the song and dance. Rose-tinted glasses have a tendency to make people remember olden days that were not actually much different than what they are now.
But even then, doing everything in their power had limitations and a separate set of rules that needed to be adhered to if they wished to keep their employment. Again, much like it is today.
There’s a (used to be stickied) thread back on the index page that covers exactly this.
Fixing a bug was never something they could do even in the early years of the game. That was expressly development only. Granting a reward that wasn’t given due to a bug (as an example) was also something they couldn’t do, as it had the potential to make things much worse before developers could throw a fix out.
As for scripted responses, welcome to industry standards. Heightened volume of petitions means there’s a lot of people looking to get help, and generally if you get that response it’s because a keyword was flagged that might indicate it was something a GM wasn’t going to be able to assist with, so to save time on both ends it suggests other alternatives that might be more suitable.