Silver Griffon
Explorer
I don't think Empower was abusive in 3.0 either. There are a lot of better things you could have done with that same 6th or 8th level spell slot. (Personally I use feats like these mainly during item creation, ie maximized empowered wands.) I do however think that it implies that an effort has been made to knock down the potency of the stat boost spells. Is this a good or a bad thing? I will wait to see the rules as a whole first before developing an opinion either way.