The main focus and goal was always to improve upon the Default UI: Slim down the look & feel, add extra useful information to display, and most importantly allow as much customization (and persistent options) for the user as possible. While a lot of the individual UI mods were maintained ...
* The game’s user interface is highly customizable. While it is not trivial to hand-modify your own interface, it is quite easy to utilize modifications that other people have made publicly available. Some of the mods I have found to be the most useful: an in-game browser with multiple ...
so we can clearly see the benefits of embracing new technology and allowing outside devs/mods to add to the game's content and lore... vs. not doing that. You could also go and see Neverwinter 1 and 2 for similar results (also not mmo but fans make persistent online worlds from them...