Splitting special and physical attacking moves that were dependent on the move instead of the type is actually a bad idea.
First of all before then you had to just look at the type of a move to get what attacking stat would be used
Second of all it makes the games more unpredictable, which is bad for competitive play. I don't know if Fire Fang will be a physical attacking move or not on an instinctual level. Before then fire fang was a special type move.
Third of all RBY had the best meta game of them all The king of UU is the chad Tentacruel and the king of OU was Tauros.