I've been wondering this for a long time. WHY, when Minecraft has constantly improved its loading speed, has FTB only gotten exponentially slower at loading all these mods. I think we're constantly breaking new records, even though our PC components are following Moore's law and are quite easily able to run heavier programs easier than before. I've always liked having a separate server instance running on my PC next to the client, and I was able to type this entire post while my server and client loaded, on a fresh install (pre-launched, even) of one of the larger 1.7.10 mod packs. I think there's no reason for this taking so long except for very bad core structure of mods, but there might be reason there HAVE to be delays so long that I'm simply not aware of. Possibly related to cross-registering blocks and item events? Even on a 4.0 GHz Octa-Core CPU with 16 GB of RAM, a good enough graphics card to run any modern game and FTB launched on a SSD, it takes more than 5 minutes before it's ready to play. I'm sorry, but, this is insane for any game. If every mod author would optimize their mod, would that possibly help? Or will it just stay this slow for the remainder of FTB history until Minecraft starts providing native mod support? (Possibly even beyond that, I fear)