I have major concerns on optimization, even though it's not an issue for me atm. My main issue, is actually the direction the game is going. When i first saw mabi, you had to pay to rebirth, do generations, or just to transform. You were very limited on your character growth if you didn't pay. Moon gates only opened at night, and had one specific destination, so you couldn't choose which moon gate you wanted to move to. There also were no mounts! It sounds pretty crappy compared to now, i'm sure. But i enjoyed that the game had emphasis on both strategy and team work. Yeah, you could solo ciar, alby, and even rundal. But most people were actually rather bad at that, so they'd actually sit in the dungeon lobbies and make parties. Clearing a dungeon without a huge party or lots of death, was a sense of accomplishment.
It was kind of like phantasm is now, but with a better sense of balance. You didn't have to rank one or two specific skills, just to get through it. Cheap gimmicks consisted of the enemy having passive defense, or maybe a golem's stomp. But this was all considered challenging back then, as getting hit by a goblin typically killed you. And i vaguely recall being proud when i was able to kill a red spider with 2-3 hits of my sword, ie one combo.
Now a days though we have loads of stats, facetank pretty much everything, unbelievably cheap skills for both crowd control and stun locking, and easy access to free nao stones as well as guardian stones. Even the skills themselves are a joke compared to what you were expected to do back then. It required effort and you had to plan on what you wanted.
Anyway, enough rambling about that. That gives you a good enough idea of why i quit mabi. But that's my reasoning, game's moved on from what i liked. If you still got things you like in the game, then keep playing and keep using w/e mods make it fun. Much as i may hate nexon, and not want much to do with mabi anymore, it's still just a game where the point should be to have fun. I expect that's why most the staff here hangs around, as i know a number of them have no interest in the game anymore as well.
Mabinogi Status