Sometime it's a combination of power to act versus laziness.
I'm not sure exactly of the details on the CoH things but I know that if say I post something on a board (like I said a few time I'm currently the main dev for
www.startsonata.com, a small mmorpg) saying this is how it is, and every player suddenly go in great lenght to contradict me, I might think that something is wrong.
My next in general would be to log in the game and try to speak with some key player I trust. I know that big game companies are really reluctant to do that anymore. A bit sad. Anyway so speaking with a player I respect that player could tell me what is the problem exactly.
Sometime it's also necessary to test on the live server for things like that. A GM make an anonymous real character, power level him a bit (if the problem is with the powerleveling process like it was for alchemy back then you have another problem but refer to step #2 when you speak with player you thrust about it) and go kill/test stuff.
In fact I remember specifically when Brad explained that he went on different live server and spoke to real shaman asking them about alchemy and then went in the dev room telling them it wasn't working and they had to unfuck it.
Thorbadin