IIRC one of the reasons they de-modded Nick was because they made the availability of the stick more strict. In the WE update, they removed it from moderator features in general, and made it a feature exclusive to modmode.
I talked to Nick about it, and he said he'd never make the mistake of building in modmode if he could use coal-ore or the stick outside of modmode. He made several attempts to request that said feature be given to moderators in normal play mode, let alone players, and was shot-down or ignored each time.