Its obvious these stats were made with PVE in mind, you’ll notice a decent portion of PVE games with rpg mechanics will let you mess with these stats as well. PVP was definitely an afterthought.
Its debatable with attack speed, but regardless of whether or not you think it works well in pve doesn’t mean that it wasn’t made for it. Again it and size are both stats that are pretty prevalent in PVE games and AO itself has been stated to be a story focused and therefore pve focused game, so there is little doubt in my mind that attack speed was just as intended for pve as size, defense, and power.
Balancing is also something Vetex has stated he hates doing which makes sense as a lot of the decisions are delegated to the balance team, so it makes a lot of sense if his initial balancing is only with pve in mind.