You could do this in Diablo 2 and 3? You could do this in Age of Conan, WoW, Rift, Asherons Call series, Anarchy Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Guild Wars, etc etc etc? I don’t remember ever being able to save the character file locally, alter it to my liking, and have it translate server side. Rather short is not the issue, I have been PC gaming since Meridian 59. I only play multiplayer games as well, so maybe single player games had that functionality, which I would be unfamiliar with.
Occasionally a specific game would have a specific test server with unlimited respecs for the sole purpose of trying out an upcoming build/patch, but that is not so very common.