So to address:
Middle Earth is fine, but same general rules apply, try to move 1000 blocks from the center of a build area and you should be fine with few exceptions (large areas like moria for example).
If you updated your map during the initial 2.8 update, you SHOULD only need to copy the customnpc folder from within the new world to your existing world, but you might need to copy the regions over as well.
As for botania, I made the decision to stay at 193 (and the config change by the way was to stop it announcing it needed an update) because I did not agree with a couple of the changes such as decaying flowers and the damage cap on the gaia guardian. I have explained this to
@Vazkii in the hopes a compromise can be forged such as making the decay configurable again and instead of an overall damage cap, limit damage to only botania weapons (which honestly makes more sense since even ars magica does that with several bosses).
For the recent map update (and folks, this is one of the main reasons I separated the map from the pack update) apparently at some point during packaging the regions that had updated something corrupted. I was able to fix it and get the update out thanks to it being brought to my attention(I don't typically test the world each update so that is why it flew under the radar).
