Seems kind of unfair that casters can target a group, but melee characters have to face down groups one by one.
Have you ever tried fighting a group of people in real life? How is this unfair? Granted you do have certain feats available to you that allow you to modify this a bit but I don't get the logic behind calling this unfair. I would think it would be unfair to allow normal melee attacks to have an area effect; I would find it to be fairly nonsensical.