In a way, yes, they were more diverse, in that the old talent tree had fuck-ton of different possible permutations. But it was pretty much an illusion, as you only ever had very few "free" talent points floating around, after you got all the essentials. People were also generally worse back then, as theory-crafting wasn't quite as big as it is now.
There was also the problem of each expansion making the trees more and more unwieldy, as we got more talent points, making it harder to balance. I can remember there being few cases where the talent trees got a little problematic, because of it.