I don't know if perhaps experienced VIM users forget what it is like to start "from scratch" with the editor, but it is a lot. When I write this stuff, I am most certainly ignorant. It would be very interesting to me to see more information about why these plugins might not be needed, but I've done a lot of reading, and this is _the first time_ I've ever seen `netrw`.
I started using it about 3 years ago so I distinctly remember how hard it was to find reliable information on the net and above all how misguided my attempt to turn Vim into a TextMate clone was. It took me a few months of tinkering before I changed my approach and decided to drop my 40+ plugins and the 1000+ lines long ~/.vimrc I didn't really understand and start from scratch.
That was the best move I could make and now I'm able to use bare Vim and my highly customized Vim with more or less the same efficiency: while I use a bunch of plugins, I'm not dependent and that's very important for me.