Yeah, vagueness in combat seemed a lot more common before 3E. I think that it's a valid play style in and of itself, but some DMs do it well and some don't. Like the 2E game I played in 2002 where the DM tracked character hit points for us...
We were investigating a thieves' guild in a major city and got into a classic street chase scene. We followed a thief into "a very narrow alley," it was so narrow that we had to go in single file. When we asked how wide the alley was, the DM responded that medieval people don't carry rulers or tape measures with them, or for that matter, people in real life don't either, and that the important thing was that we had to go in single-file. So I'm imagining it's somewhere in the three to four-foot wide range. But alas, tape measures don't appear on the equipment lists of the Player's Handbook, so we get the pleasure of not having a mat interfere with our imaginations.
When combat breaks out, I think that I'm going to stand behind the fighter and heal him, and he'll be able to block off the alley. Suddenly, this "very narrow alley" was wide enough for the guild thugs to get past the fighter and attack the rest of the party. We call the DM on the evocative narrowness of this alley, to which he responds, "narrow is a relative term, what is narrow to an ox cart isn't necessarily narrow to a housecat." So although we had to file in single-file, the alley is wide enough for thugs to get past the fighter unchallenged and attack the squishier members of our party, and also to gang up on the fighter three-to-one.
That suddenly made me appreciate attacks of opportunity and want to go back to 3E.
I was playing the cleric, and it was therefore pretty important to me to know how banged up the characters were. When I'd ask about the fighter, he'd say something like, "He's fine," "he's getting winded but doesn't have any obvious wounds," "he has a few shallow nicks and scratches but isn't bleeding, nothing serious." Then BAM! The fighter is dead because he ran out of hit points. It was a major pain to know when to heal people, because this "narrative damage" system meant that no wounds looked serious until it was the one that killed you (and he didn't use the "hovering on death's door" rule, you were dead at 0 hit points).
But really, those are tales of DM vagueness moreso than minis and mats, so I'll stop there.
I think that the real advantage to having miniatures and mats is that players are all on the same page. The wizard doesn't have to ask the DM how many of the orcs he can catch in his fireball. The fighter doesn't have to ask if he can interpose himself between the orc chieftan and his wizard buddy. The rogue doesn't have to ask if there's cover to hide behind. The ranger doesn't have to ask if there's something blocking his shot at the orc chieftan. Once my groups started using minis and mats, I noticed that everyone knew what they wanted to do when their turn came up. Getting a round-by-round update from the DM gets cumbersome after a while.
I cannot fathom how using rigid, point-of-reference material would bring in any where near as many problems as it solves. As mentioned above, it clarifies where enemies are, how a fighter can get in between danger and his squishy friends, where to aim spells to hit enemies and not allies, and just where you need to be to flank, hide, or charge someone.
