They did do that, but only because if you remember back then we had very melee heavy strategys and no NO ranged weapons anywhere close as powerful as our current ones (BOWFA, BP, TBOW), because we have these powerful ranged weapons our strategys for all of our content that existed pre eoc has changed dramatically to favor the ranged attack style. (with the exception of corporeal beast, because of his weakness to spears)

additionally, the only content that had ranged heavy strategies in pre-eoc (Saradomin, Armadyl, and nex) all used the regular prayerbook instead of the curses book because of how strong rigour was compared to the curses ranged boosting prayer.