Yeah, there are more useful skills, but a "full"template was always the goal. In the old days, people just added magery to every template since it was always useful. It was also the the only way to really heal originally (potions were expensive and didn't have greater versions, healing did at most 6 hit points of healing). Magic resist was the only way to stop damaging spells, so everyone had it. It was really a struggle to get up in those days; today it is trivially easy. Making more skills useful does mean that template choices can be hard, but even in the old old days, you wanted 700 points of something.
There is always a tradeoff with synergy. Making skills help each other means people can really focus on something (high spirit speak to make a better necromancer, arms lore to make a better weapon/armor crafter), but it also makes generalists less useful. However generalist templates often take advantage of the strongest interactions anyway (for example, the tank mages of old and ninja tamers and sampire of today).
I see no problem with making some of the more useless skills more useful as long as it doesn't hurt what is already there. The anatomy interaction with healing made healing a lot better when it came in; it didn't nerf those using just the healing skill. Spirit speak got a lot of depth when necromancy came in. Parrying gained a lot with Bushido. These are good design examples: they add to the came without making old stuff useless.
So many skills have gotten second lives with changes. Fishing is another great example. Originally, fishing got you fish. Just fish. 100 points of fish. And more fish. SOS bottles, nets, maps, and pearls are all additions that made the skill worthwhile.
I can't imagine a game of UO with only 10 skills or 20 skills. It wouldn't have the depth without this variety. Ten years in, there are skills I still haven't really tried (taming, discordence, spellweaving, bushido), but I see the huge skill list as something to aspire to, not a burden.
