I don't think it's the keybindings in particular that people love about vim, you can rebind everything after all. I'm attached to vim keybindings in the same way I'm attached to qwerty keyboards - something had to be the default, it's fairly arbitrary, and there's very marginal benefits in switching to a different set of bindings.

It really is the modal editing style that's the main draw. Someone who edits frequently should find vim more convenient, not less, but it does require a lot of time to learn all the available commands and burn them into your muscle memory.