D&D 5E (2024) CoDzilla? Yeah Na Its CoDGFaW.

[Lanefan]

I do think its a fair argument though because that's how the class was designed. "You won't achieve this game-breaking thing" is just a question of, why put it in the rules to begin with?

If nothing else, to give some guidance for DM adjudication when someone casts one from a device - Ring of Three Wishes, Luckblade, etc. - or gets one (or several!) from a Deck of Many Things, or earns a favour from a wish-granting entity such as a Djinni. From all appearances, such things were intended to be (relatively) considerably more common in play than PCs hard-casting the Wish spell.

2E's classes were not built evenly and I, frankly, don't think balance was ever a concern for TSR

Can't speak to 2e so much but pre-UA 1e did have some class balance, though achieved in what today are considered less-than-ideal ways:

--- staggered xp progression (which works quite well IMO)
--- uncommon classes gated behind stat and-or alignment requirements (stat requirements are fine, alignment requirements don't work as well)
--- long-term-averaging balance i.e. you're good now but poor later (Ranger), or vice-versa (MU and Monk).

Not perfect, of course, but it worked well enough to be and remain playable over the long term.

That said, Unearthed Arcana butchered it if used as written.