Jur Wrote: I used to play with mods because it was just so much more advanced and enhanced. The creatures, the dungeons and the adventures you could explore, simply amazing!.
I used to play modded a lot too, but the load times and crashes just weren't worth it for me anymore. I've moved on to serverside mods which don't really affect loading times and if done right are much more stable. You can get pretty close to modded with custom plugins, server software, and textureresource packs.