Well older games also had very poor in game documentation. There was rarely any in game text to explain what a spell, stat or class did. As a result you needed a manual, otherwise you couldn't function. Today games tend to have tooltips explaining what everything does.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Years ago, reading a handbook was a necessity for me - or otherwise I just couldn't play the game.

Reading was necessary for understanding the game.

I think this tells a lot about how games have evolved over the years that reading a handbook isn't necessary anymore … Except for strategy games, maybe … ?