I agree with the conclusion of the article, going for a fun game rather than trying to balance it perfectly is the best way to go. When games set out from the start to be competitive, balanced, and cater to the professional's feedback it takes away that element of discovery and letting the game grow organically. If something is obviously broken then A game in recent history that did this was StarCraft 2. StarCraft 1 became a huge competitive game well after the last balance patch came for it. This allowed the players and the community to grow through strategy and map making. In StarCraft 2 once something powerful (and fun) was discovered, players went the route of complaining online so the developers would change it. For myself and many others, this took away a lot of the fun and hurt the longevity of the game. Strategies/races/units falling out of favor did not happen naturally, a patch directly caused it. In StarCraft 1 you could not complain and expect a patch to save you, and you had to come up with something to deal with it.

To be fair, in SC1, maps played a HUGE role in balance. On Blue Storm, for example, Zergs used to have a multiple percentage point advantage over Terrans, but the map makers fixed that by adding a little space behind the minerals on the natural, making it a little bit easier to defend against Muta harass and thereby curbing the advantage.