It might be less fun, but it's more realistic, and people like Xillix and other roleplayers think magic should be realistic.
Hmm... "Realistic." You keep using that word to describe magic. I don't think it means what you think it means. If you want magic in Planeshift to be "realistic," then it should not work at all.

BTW I've been away from the Planeshift forums for a very long time, and I'm sad to see that nothing has changed. The person who started this thread had a valid complaint/suggestion, and this is the "Complaint Department," yet his suggestion is pretty much treated with a condescending attitude by the devs. Maybe that's why the game has hardly progressed in the four years since I first tried it.
To the poster of this thread, I agree completely with your suggestion. As it stands, this game is not a place for someone to be a mage. Planeshift is all about mining and smacking brain-dead mobs with a sword. If you want a game with more interesting and complete magic implementation, you're really looking at the wrong game. I might suggest Regnum Online, Perfect World, Rappelz or a free WoW server. All these games are free to play (WoW is free on private servers). If you are a Linux user, Regnum has a native Linux client, and both Perfect World and WoW run in Linux under Wine.
-Drahlian