In the true spirit of the thread, I have absolutely no interest in char-op, and my eyes glaze over when character generation discussion goes in that direction. And I hate how it dominates discussions about classes. Heck, to be honest, I'm not all that enamored of "character building" in D&D in general.
But you know, it's brought so many people to D&D. Not just in the 3e and 4e eras, but that base assumption that you could create a character pretty close to what you had in mind has certainly been a factor in 5e's popularity. A lot of people interested in the game would likely have bounced very hard off of TSR-era random generation. It's pushed forward the design of the game. The char-op folks broke 3e, which led to 4e, which led to many of the ideas and design elements of 5e.