I do like Sluggo's case: that we probably would not have been questioning this had the OT had it. That said, I'm firmly in the camp that they were better without them. That they were better and stronger than that. That, to me, it defined the difference between a Jedi Knight (Ben Kenobi: warrior, out-in-the-field having adventures) and a Jedi Master (Yoda: thinking, teaching, philosophizing), an idea that the prequels also shat upon. Those may have been ideas I conjured up due to the fact that those characters didn't have lightsabers in the OT, but they sure as hell work better than what we got.

Makes me wonder, though. We've seen evidence of Yoda giving Luke lightsaber training in pre-production art for ESB. If they had worked lightsabers into Yoda as far back as that, how would George have "upped the anti" for the prequels in that scenario? Might have been far worse.