You'd think nobody was able to finish Dark Souls during the first week prior to anything being up online. You didn't need to "Wiki crawl" to finish the game at all, and if you had any experience at all with Demon's, you already knew the basics of the game anyway.
Planning out a character wasn't hard, and the only thing someone wouldn't really know about out of the gates would be the soft cap on endurance. Screwing up a character was a part of the process anyway, and it also led to replay value, unless you only felt the urge to play it once and then shelve it.
Respeccing only started becoming common after World of Warcraft. It used to be essentially non existent, yet with how accustomed people have become with the convenience of no consequences, you'd think there was never a time where it didn't exist. Convenience of no consequence was never what the Souls games were about, and part of the reason why people heralded them as a proper return to form.
The comment about respeccing just comes off like someone who doesn't really want a challenge, but just had to play the most fashionable game at the time, because Dark Souls is hard. Everyone is talking about it, so it must be the best thing ever!